yl usually in a speculative vein. Had she
brought the court jewels with her? Did that dreadful Brina kneel on one
knee and kiss the hem of her garment? Did she ever wear her crown?

Royalty meant much more to Beryl than it did to Robin, for Beryl
attached to it a personal interest. Would she not, as sure as anything,
sometime play before crowned heads by royal command? Sometimes, lying
wide-eyed in the dark, she pictured herself at such a moment, gorgeously
gowned, and delightfully disdainful of the bejeweled, becrowned, stately
kings and queens and little princelings, dukes and duchesses and earls
and countesses, all hanging on the exquisite notes she drew from her
strings. After she finished they would forget their crowns and things
and fall upon her in a sort of humble adoration. Beryl shivered
exquisitely, she could make the picture so very real! Now, when she
dreamed, the queens and duchesses looked like the mysterious mistress of
the house by the Rushing Water.

Robin thought of their Dowager Queen of Altruria as perhaps being a
little lonely, sometimes. With everyone, now, watching the weather in
anxious dread of a snowstorm, it occurred to her that such a storm
would shut the little house near the Rushing Water off from the world.

"Beryl, let's go and see our Dowager! It may be the last time we can
until Spring. I'd like to take her something, too. Something Christmasy.
Christmas is only two weeks off and think how dreadful to spend
Christmas all by yourself."

Beryl thought both the visit and the gift a fine idea and set her wits
to working to contrive an offering suitable for one of the Dowager's
station in life.

She suggested helping themselves to what the Manor had to offer, for,
certainly, Robin, being a Forsyth, had such a "right."

"Flowers and fruit and maybe a book. It would never be missed and you
could take one of these that hasn't anything written in the front. See,
here's a collection of Dante's poems--it's as good as new. And who'd
ever want it with all these other books here?"

Beryl's reasoning seemed logical and Robin put aside a tiny doubt she
had as to her right to "help herself" to even a very small volume. Some
day she could explain to her Aunt Mathilde that she had given it to a
nice old lady who lived all alone.

The girls filled a huge basket with luscious fruit from Budge's
storehouse, and gay flowers from the conservatory, and concealed the
little book under the bright foliag