Prue came back dissolved in tears from closing the door behind her aunt; she found her mother, Wythie, and Rob sitting silent and sad around the fire.
"Oh, Rob, dear Rob," cried Prue, hysterically, "you mean well, but how can you be so obstinate? Don't listen to her, Mardy; we shall never be happy again; we shall lose our home, too, if you do!" And Prue dropped, sobbing, in the big chair Mrs. Winslow had vacated.
"Mardy, Mardy," cried Rob, starting up, pushing back her hair with her old, impulsive gesture, and running over to fall on her knees beside her mother's chair, "it makes me nearly crazy to feel I am taking such a responsibility, but I must, for I know, I know I'm right! I wasn't going to tell Aunt Azraella my plans, and have her make a worse fuss than ever, but I've laid them, and you must, you truly must, let me have my way. Write this Marston scamp you must take a few days to consider his offer, that you are not prepared to accept or refuse it for a week. It can't possibly make any difference, unless he is a scamp, and then we want it to. And to-morrow you let me go to New York, and find out what the machine is really worth, and what can be done with it."
"To New York! You, Rob, alone? And you find out what can be done with the invention, you, a young, inexperienced girl? My darling, you are crazy!" cried her mother, while Wythie and Prue sat up with gasps of amazed horror.
"Mardy, I am not in the least crazy. If we had anyone else to do it, we would let them, of course, but who is there? I will go straight to Mr. John Lester Baldwin, the lawyer, Patergrey's college chum, whom he said he would trust utterly. I took his name and address the day Mr. Marston was here, you know; Patergrey wanted me to remind him to write him, but there was no time—" Rob stopped short, and Wythie made a little moan.
"Now, Mardy, this is no wild scheme, you see; it is plain, practical common-sense," Rob continued. "Mr. Baldwin will put me somewhere to board where I shall be safe, and he will do all he can for me when I tell him who I am, and what has happened, if he is the man Patergrey thought him. If he says take the four thousand, I am satisfied, but if he says not to, don't you see how well it will be that I went? And I have my own money, enough still, for my expenses."
"Rob, Rob, you glorious girl!" cried Wythie, starting up in a rapture. "Let her go, Mardy; she is inspired, like Joan of Arc."
"My Rob, my dear Rob, my brave, reliable daughter," said Mrs. Grey, fondly, "what can I say to you? I am not willing to let you go alone, but if I were, the objections we made to putting off Mr. Marston still hold good. Suppose you fail, and we lose not only the offer, but the expenses of your journey and your stay in the city?"
"Mardy, I shall not fail," cried Rob. "Do you not remember that Patergrey said: 'It must not be less than fifty thousand dollars to be accepted?' That was the last time he spoke of it, you know. He understood its value. I don't like to bother you, but you see it's chiefly for your sake, and, besides, I worked with Patergrey all the time and I feel as though I could not desert the dear invention now, if I wanted to—let it be stolen from us, the work of all that dear life, and its only legacy to us, except the little grey house, with its mortgage. You must say yes, Mardy, my darling; I was Patergrey's 'son Rob,' you know, and I must defend his invention, and be the man of the family, his son Rob still." Rob's beautiful head dropped on her mother's knee, and the steady, clear, young voice broke pitifully.
Mrs. Grey leaned over and laid her wet cheek on Rob's bright rings of hair, with the red shining through them in the firelight.