"Then, if I succeed, I might enlarge my field, have classes in neighboring towns, and by and by in Hartford and New Haven, and—why not?—New York," cried Rob, airily. "Then if the bricquette machine did turn out badly I could support the family."
"Rob, Rob, I thought you had no doubt of the invention!" cried her mother, such a sharp note of pain in her voice that it betrayed her own doubt, and her unconscious dependence on the young girl's opinion, ignorant though it was.
"Neither have I, Mardy, it's sure—don't be afraid," said Rob, hastily. "But when you want a thing so dreadfully, dreadfully much you can't help thinking what it would be not to get it. And I feel as the Red Queen must have felt when she was a little girl, and had to believe three impossible things before breakfast. I do believe, but I have to try—try with both hands, as Her Red Majesty told Alice to do—to keep my faith, though I know it's all right all the while. And the invention is so nearly completed, Francie, that Patergrey thinks that next week he can write to the people in New York whom he wants to have buy it. Isn't that a comfort, after so long? It sounds so definite."
"Indeed it does!" cried Frances, heartily. Mrs. Grey hastily left the room, and Wythie ran after her, guessing that she had gone to hide sudden tears.
Rob looked after them soberly. "Oh, France," she said, "you could not have come with your plan at a better time—we need cheering. They put the mortgage on the little grey house yesterday—they were doing it when we came home. And Patergrey got so wrought up that he had another of those dreadful heart attacks last night."
"Oh, Rob; poor, dear, brave Rob! I am so sorry for you!" cried Frances, with ready tears of sympathy and a convulsive hug.
Rob shook herself free. "Now, don't pity me!" she cried. "I have all I can do to keep steady if I am as hard as nails, and you see I must keep gay for the others. I know, France; we know each other, but don't love me now! No one could have done me the good you have in giving me the hope of being useful. I'll never forget how you came in this black morning and tried to 'push dem clouds away'—you have made a big rift. If ever I get rich and famous I'll give you your heart's desire, and if ever I can help you while I'm poor—which may be a while yet, you know—I'll walk over the ocean to do it. But don't you love me nor pity me to-day."
"All right. I don't love you any day; I despise you, and always did," said Frances, with a last squeeze as she withdrew her arms. "Now I must run home to tell mamma you are unanimous. She said if you liked the plan she would see all the parents she could this afternoon, and bid them send their little lambs for you to pipe to them."
"Well, Francie, Patergrey does want me, so I suppose I ought to let you go," said Rob. "Tell your blessed mother I can never thank her, but tell her how troubled you found us, and she will understand the good she has done."
Rob hardly knew how it happened that at the end of two weeks she found herself established as a Scheherazade, telling stories, not to an Eastern tyrant, but to five-and-twenty lesser tyrants—not less tyrannical—with the east in their bright eyes.