d brought the
climax to the old woman's wrath. All Beryl's shortcomings tumbled off
her tongue in an incoherent flow of ill-temper. A stormy scene resulted
which left the old housekeeper spent and Beryl blazing with indignation.

Consequently, when poor Robin, depressed from her first hour with the
tutor, trying not to feel that Gray Manor was going to be a prison
instead of a castle, sought out her new friend she found her throwing
her few possessions into a cheap suitcase that lay, opened, across her
narrow bed.

"Oh, what are you doing?" cried Robin in alarm.

"I'm going--that's what. She fired me."

Robin's first thought upon awaking that morning had been of Beryl; she
had suffered the keenest impatience all through the trying morning,
longing to go in search of her new friend. She could not lose her
now--for a hundred Budges.

"Oh, I won't let you go!"

"A lot _you_ could do!" cried Beryl scornfully, tears very close. "I
just can't please the old thing. But I hate to go home." She sat down,
dolefully, on the edge of the bed. "I wanted to stay until I had earned
two hundred dollars."

Two hundred dollars! That seemed such a very big amount of money to
Robin that she sat silent, thinking about it.

Beryl, misinterpreting her quiet, tossed her head. "I s'pose that
doesn't mean much to you. But it does to me--'specially when I have to
earn it." Then, with a flash of temper: "What do you know about wanting
some one thing with all your whole heart and knowing just where you can
get it and not having the money?"

Beryl made her tragedy very real and pouring out her troubles always
brought her a grain of comfort.

"I've never had a thing in my life that I wanted," she finished.

"Oh, Beryl, I'm so sorry."

"Sorry! Why, a lucky little thing like you are can't even know what I'm
talking about. That's why I said we couldn't be friends. _I've_ had to
work at home like a slave ever since I can remember. Pop's sick all the
time and cross, and poor mother looks so tired and tries to be so
cheerful and brave that your heart aches for her. And even when you're
poor, a girl wants things, pretty things and to do things like other
girls--and work as hard as you can you can't ever seem to reach them. I
get just sick of it. I thought--if I could get this money--"

"Did you want it for your mother?" broke in Robin, sympathetically.

Beryl's face flushed redder. "Well, not exactly. That's the way it
always is in books, b