ng back through the "cathedral aisle" Robin gave herself a little
shake as though to rouse herself from some nightmare.

"Oh, Mrs. Lynch, it's dreadful!"

"What, dearie?" Mrs. Lynch had been thinking that Granny Castle couldn't
be one of the Castle's of her old-country county.

"That place. Are they all like that? How can they live?"

Mrs. Lynch hesitated a moment and there was a perceptible tightening of
her tender lips.

"Well, dearie, people _have_ to live--life goes on in spite of things.
Maybe poor old Granny wishes real often it'd been her that had been
taken instead of that poor Sarah. Things weren't so bad for them when
Sarah lived--they say. She was an up-and-doing girl and kept things nice
though she had to work hard to do it, poor little thing. It's in the
hospital that old woman should be with some one to wait on her and keep
her warm. No one but little Susy--"

"I forgot all I'd planned to say! Susy looked so cold, Mrs. Lynch. I
hated my nice warm clothes."

"Oh, Susy was warm enough. She's a bright child, she is. When she's a
bit older things will ease up."

Robin remembered what Beryl had said of the girls in Wassumsic having
nothing else to do but go into the Mills. Susy would grow older and take
Sarah's place. But what if she didn't want to? What happened to the "big
girls" who didn't want to go into the Mills? Robin could hear Beryl's
contemptuous: "Why they haven't a chance in the world." Well, anyway,
someone could make the Mills so nice that the girls would _want_ to work
in them. "I wish I were big!" cried Robin with such passion that Mrs.
Lynch, not knowing her train of thought, had a sudden qualm at taking a
sensitive little thing like Miss Robin to poor old Granny Castle's.

"Now, dearie, don't you worry. Things come out somehow--in the next
world maybe for the Granny Castles, but they do. Now that idea of yours
of fixing that cottage--"

"Oh, I forgot to tell you! My guardian says I may. At least he said that
if I wanted a club, to help myself, and that must mean he consents. He's
a dear. Have you time to go there with me now and just peek into it? I'm
sure we can get in."

"I'll take the time," cried Mrs. Moira with an interest as eager as
Robin's. "I'll just drop in and tell my Danny when we go past--it's so
lonesome he gets when I'm slow coming."

Robin's House of Laughter looked a little deserted standing alone in the
shadow of the hillside, gaunt branches creaking over its lo