e was
going and after he reached New York he telephoned."

"Dale says everyone at the Mills is talking about you, Robin--and what
you did."

"Why," Robin's face sobered, "I didn't do--anything."

"Well, Dale says your going in to poor old Granny the way you did has
made everyone like you. And they were getting awfully worked up against
the Forsyths and the Mills. I will admit it seems funny to me--making
such a fuss over such a little thing. I wish--as long as you're all
right now--you had done something real heroic, like jumping into the
river to save someone or going into a burning building."

"Oh, I'd have never had the courage to do _that_," protested Robin,
shuddering.

At that moment the nurse put her head in the door.

"Three minutes are up," she warned.

"Please, can't she stay?" begged Robin, in alarm.

"I must go home, anyway, Robin, to tell mother. You have no idea how
anxious she is--everyone is. People hang around our door. I suppose they
think we have the latest news about you. Well, we have, now. And,
Robin--mother was awfully angry about my--leaving you the way I did. She
begged me to come back, long ago. I'm sorry, now, I didn't. Good-bye,
Robin. I'll be back, tomorrow."

Beryl walked to the village in a deep absorption of thought. Certain
values she had fostered had tumbled about and had to be put in order.
Here were not only hundreds of mill folk making a "fuss" over what Robin
had done, but the household of the Manor as well--old Budge, usually as
adamant as a brick wall, crying! No one loved the heroic more than
Beryl, but to her thinking it lay in a spectacular, and with a dramatic
indifference, risking one's own life for another, not in a little
unnecessary sentimental impulse. When she had heard of what Robin had
done she had declared her "crazy" to go near the Castles, to which her
mother had indignantly replied: "And are you thinking the blessed child
ever thinks of herself at all?" _That_ was the quality, of course, about
Robin that you never guessed from anything she said but that you just
felt. And the Mill people were feeling it now.

Turning these thoughts over and over, Beryl suddenly faced the
disturbing conviction that she was moulding her own young life on very
opposite lines. Tell herself as often as she liked--and it was
often--that she'd had to fight to get everything she had and to keep it,
she knew that it never crossed her mind to ask herself what she was
giving--to