keep me half-way decent to others less rich than I, and I'm afraid
it'll take lots of yours, too, to put the finishing touches to that
lesson. Come on. We love each other now, and love puts everything
right. Come on. Let's find that Robin and see what we can do for him
without hurting his feelings."

"Oh! yes, come, let's hurry! But first to the Lady Principal. Maybe we
can help them both. Won't that be fine?"

But they were not to help Robin just then. A groan from the servants'
parlor, a pleasant room opening from the kitchen, arrested their
attention and made them pause to listen. Punctuated by other sounds,
a querulous voice was complaining:

"Seems if there warn't a hull spot left on my old body that ain't
bruised sore as a bile. Why, sir, when I fell off that blamed sled
we'd tinkered up"--groan--"I didn't know anything. Just slid--an'
slid--an' rolled over and over, never realizin' which side of me was
topmost till I fetched up--kerwhack! to the very bottom. Seemed as if
I'd fell out o' the sky into the bottomless pit. Oh! dear!"

Dawkins's voice it was that answered him, both pitying and teasing him
in the same breath:

"I'm sure it's sorry I am, Mr. Gilpin, for what's befell; but for a
man that's lived in a tobogganing country ever since he was born, you
begun rather late in life to learn the sport. Why--"

"Ain't no older'n the Bishop! Can't one man do same's t'other, I'd
like to know, Mis' Dawkins?"

"Seems not;" laughed the maid. "But, here, take this cup of hot
spearmint tea. 'Twill warm your old bones and help 'em to mend; an'
next time you start playin' children's game--why don't! And for
goodness' sake, John, quit groanin'! Takin' on like that don't help
any and I tell you fair and square I've had about all the strain put
on my nerves, to-day, 't I can bear. What was your bit of a roll down
that smooth ice compared to what our girls went through?"

"Has you got any nuts in your pockets? Has you?" broke in
Millikins-Pillikins, who had been a patient listener to the confab
between the farmer and the nurse till she could wait no longer. Never
had the old man come to Oak Knowe without some dainty for the little
girl and she expected such now.

"No, sissy, I haven't. I dunno as I've got a pocket left. I dunno
nothing, except--except--What'll SHE say when I go home all lamed up
like this! Oh! hum! Seems if I was possessed to ha' done it, and so
she thought. But 'twas Robin's fault. If Robin hadn't b