l live a great deal out of doors.
It is very lovely," she added, making a round period after "sweater."

And there was another list which included a wrist watch and a writing
set. "They can send on most of these things," she pondered.

Robin slyly pinched herself to know that she was still a
living-breathing girl; all seemed as unreal as though she had slipped
away into a magician's world.

But the lists completed, dinner over, alone with her new guardian, an
overwhelming loneliness swept her. Cornelius Allendyce, turning from a
protracted study of the blazing fire, was startled to find the girl's
head pillowed in her arm, her shoulders shaking with smothered sobs.

"My dear! My dear!" he exclaimed, very much as Miss Effie would have
done.

"I--I can't help it. I tried--"

Poor Robin looked so very small in the big chair that remorse seized
Cornelius Allendyce. How could he have taken this little girl from her
corner, shabby as it was?

It was not too late--

"Miss Gordon," he began a little uneasily, wondering what guardians did
when their wards were hysterical. "My dear, don't cry, I beg of you.
Come, it is not too late to go back. We will explain--"

Robin lifted her head. "I--I don't want to go back. But I was thinking
of Jimmie. He must be awfully lonesome--now. You see you don't know
Jimmie. He depends on me to remind him of things like his hot milk. And
just at first, it will be hard. But, no, no, I don't want to go back."

"Then I would suggest that you go to bed. You are doubtless very tired
from the excitement of everything. And tomorrow will be a busy day--and
an interesting day."

Robin drew herself slowly from the chair. She limped over to the divan
upon which Cornelius Allendyce sat. Her eyes were very steady, dark with
earnestness.

"I'm ashamed I cried. I won't do it again. But I want you to know, oh,
you must know, that I'm not going to Gray Manor because of all those
clothes and the money or anything like that. There could not be anything
at Gray Manor as nice as Jimmie's and my bird-cage. But I want Jimmie to
have his chance--"

Left alone, Cornelius Allendyce found himself haunted by Robin's "Jimmie
must be awfully lonesome." What a strange pair--the quaint old-young
girl living in a world which circled around this father--the father, by
the girl's own assertion, "depending" upon the girl. And little Robin,
scarcely more than a child, realizing that she hindered the man's
development