ep it there to
return to my house; then you and Miss Effie put your heads together and
decide just what you want to do first with your money."

Beryl rejoiced that it was a nice shiny taxi, quite like a real lady's
car. She sniffed delightedly the leathery smell, sat bolt upright with
her chin in the air.

"Go straight down Fifth Avenue," she instructed the driver.

Spring, with its eternal sorcery, caressed the great city. Its spell
threw a sheen over the drab things Beryl remembered so well, the brick
schoolhouse, the Settlement, the dirty narrow street flanked by
dull-brown tenements with their endless fire escapes mounting higher and
higher, hung now with bedding of every color. The street swarmed with
children returning from school, and they gathered about the automobile
climbing on to the running board on either side and peering through the
windows.

"It's the Lynch girl," someone cried and another answered jeeringly.

"Aw, git off! Wot she doin' in this swell autymobile?"

Beryl did not mind in the least the street urchins; even though she had
lived among them, neither she nor Dale had ever been of them, thanks to
her mother's watchful care. She smiled at them and fled into the dark
alley way that led to the court which, all through her childhood, had
been her playground.

As she climbed, a dreadful thought appalled her. What if dear old
Jacques Henri had moved away--or died! But, no, at the very moment she
let the fear halt her climbing step she heard the dear sound of his
violin. She crept to his door and softly opened it.

The old man stood near his window, through which he could see a slit of
blue sky between two walls. On the sill were the pink geraniums he
nursed through winter and summer, their pinkness brightening the gloom
of the bare, dim room. Jacques Henri called them his family.

"Jacques Henri!" Beryl ran to him and threw her strong arms about him.

"Hold! Let me look. My girl? Ah, do my old eyes tell me false things?
No, it's my little Beryl!"

Beryl took his violin from him, kissed its strings lightly and laid it
carefully upon the table. Then she pushed the startled old man back into
the one comfortable chair and perched herself upon its arm.

"Listen, dear Jacques Henri, and I'll tell you the strangest story that
you ever heard--about Queens and gypsies and green beads and a girl you
know. Don't say _one_ word until I'm through." And Beryl told in all its
wonderful detail, the happ