Promptly at nine o'clock, young Dale Lynch turned the key in the door of "Tony Sebastino, Groceries" and started, whistling, homeward. Three times a week, from the close of school until nine o'clock, he worked in the store, snatching a dinner of bananas, or bread and cheese, between customers. Because "Mom" had whispered that there were to be "dumplin's" this night and that she would keep some warm for him, and because the wind whipped chillingly through his thin clothing, he broke into a run.

His homeward way led him past a bit of open triangle which in the neighborhood was dignified by the name of park, a dreary place now, dirty straw stacked about the fountain, dry leaves and papers cluttering the brown earth and whipping against the iron palings of the fence. Dale, still whistling, turned its corner and ran, full-tilt, upon a bit of humanity clinging, like the paper and leaves, to the fence.

"Giminy Gee!" Dale jumped back in alarm. Then: "Did I scare you, kid? Oh, say, what's the matter?" For the face that turned to his was red and swollen with weeping. "Y'lost?" This was Dale's natural conclusion, for the hour was late, and the child a very small one.

"I lost—my Cynthia."

"Your—what?"

"My—my Cynthia. She's my b-bestest doll. I forgot her." The voice trailed off in a wail.

Dale, touched by her woe, looked about him. Certainly no Cynthia was visible. By rapid questioning on his part he drew from her the story of her desertion. She had played a nice game of running 'round and 'round and counting the "things," waiting for Mr. Tony; Cynthia did not like to run because it shook her eyes, so she had put her down on the edge of the straw where the wind would not blow on her. And then Mr. Tony had come and had told her to "hustle along" and she "had runned away and for-g-got Cynthia!"

"Well, I guess she's somebody else's Cynthia now, kid. Things don't stay long in the parks 'round here."

Dale seemed so very old and very wise that the tiny girl listened to his verdict with blanching face. He knew, of course.

"Where d'you live?" demanded Dale. "Why, you're just a baby! Anybody with you?"

The child pointed rather uncertainly to one of the intersecting streets.

"I come that way," she said, then, even while saying it, began to wonder if that were the way she had come. The streets all looked so much alike. She had run along the curb, so as to be as far away as possible from the dark alley ways and the doors. And it had been a long way.

Her lip quivered though she would not cry. After Cynthia's fate, just to be lost herself did not matter.

"Well, don't you know where you live? What's the street? I'll take you home."

"22 Patchin Place," lisped the child.

Dale hesitated a moment to make sure of his bearings. "Well, then, come along. I know where that is. And you forget 'bout your Cynthia. You've got another doll, haven't you? If you haven't, you just ask Santa Claus for one. Why, say, kiddo, what's this? You lame?" For the little girl skipped jerkily at his side.

"That's just the way I'm made," the child answered, quite indifferent to the shocked note in the boy's voice. "I can walk and run, but I go crooked."

"What's your name?"

"Robin Forsyth." She made it sound like "Wobbin Force."

"Oh, Wobbin Force. Funny name, isn't it? And what's your Ma and Pa going to say to you for running off?"

Putting a small hand trustingly into the boy's big one, the child skipped along at his side. "Oh, nothing," she answered, lost in an admiring contemplation of her rescuer. "What's they, anyway?"

"A Ma? Don't you know what your mother is?"

Little Robin met his astonishment with a ripple of laughter. "Oh a mother! I had a lovely, lovely mother once but she's gone away—to Heaven. And is a Pa a Jimmie?"

"A—what?" Dale had never met such a strange child.

"'Cause Jimmie's my Parent. I call him Parent sometimes and sometimes I call him Jimmie."

If his companion had not been so very small Dale might have suspected an attempt at "kidding." He glanced sidewise and suspiciously at her but all he saw was a cherub face framed in a tilted sky-blue tam-o'shanter and straggling ends of flaming red hair.

"Jimmie won't scold me. He'd want me to try to find Cynthia." Robin smothered a sigh. "He wasn't home anyway."

"D'you live all alone? You and your Jimmie?"

"Oh, yes, only Aunt Milly's downstairs and Grandpa Jones is 'cross the hall, so I'm never 'fraid. They're not my really truly aunt's and grandfather's—I just call them that. And Jimmie leaves the light burning anyway. What's your name? And are you very old? Are you a man like Jimmie?"

Dale, warming under the adoration he saw on the small face, felt very big and very manly. He returned the little squeeze that tugged on his hand.

"Oh, I'm a big fellow," he answered.

"You look awful nice," the little girl pursued. "Just like one of my make-believe Princes. I wish you lived with Jimmie and me. I wouldn't mind Cynthia then."

"But the Princes never lived with the little girls in the stories, you know," argued Dale, finding it a very pleasant and unusual sensation to act the rÔle of a Prince even to a very small girl. "You have to find me, you see."

Miss Robin jumped with joy. "Oh, goody, goody! I'll always make b'lieve you are a Prince and I'll find you and you must find me, too. You will, won't you?"

"You just bet I will," promised Dale, easily. "Here's your street." He stopped to study the house numbers. Suddenly a door flew open wide and a bareheaded man plunged into the street, almost tumbling upon them.

"Robin! Good gracious! I thought you were—stolen—lost—"

Robin, very calm, clasped him about his knee.

"I was lost, Jimmie. But this very big boy brought me home. He's a Prince—I mean he's my make-believe Prince."

"But, Robin—" The man turned from the child to Dale.

"I found her way down by Sheridan Square. She was hunting for her doll she'd left there."

"While I was walking with Mr. Tony this afternoon I played in the park and I forgot Cynthia."

"Good Heavens—and you went way off there all by yourself to find the thing?"

In her pride of Dale, Robin overlooked the slur on Cynthia.

"I went alone," she repeated, "but I came home with my Prince."

Gradually Robin's father was recovering from his shock. The muscles of his face relaxed; he ran his fingers through his thick hair, red like the child's, with a gesture of throwing off some horrible nightmare. To Dale he looked very boyish—with a little of Robin's own cherubic expression.

"Well, say, you gave me a fright, child. And you must promise not to do it again. Why, I can't ever leave you alone unless you do."

He turned to Dale, who stood, lingering, loath to leave the little Robin under the doubtful protection her Jimmie offered. "I'm no end grateful to you, my boy. If there's anything I can do for you—" He slipped one hand mechanically into his pocket.

"I don't want anything." Dale spoke curtly and stepped back. "It wasn't any bother; it's a nice night to walk."

With a child's quick intuition Robin realized that her gallant Prince was about to slip out of her sight. Her Jimmie had pulled his hand from his pocket and was extending it to the boy. He was not even inviting him to come in and smoke like he always invited Mr. Tony and Gerald and all the others. But of course Princes wouldn't smoke, anyway.

She waited until her father had finished his thanks, then, stepping up to Dale, she reached out two small arms and by holding on to Dale's, drew herself up almost to the boy's chin. Upon it she pressed a shy, warm kiss.

"Good-bye, Prince. You will hunt for me, won't you? Promise! Cross your heart!"

Dale, flaming red, confused, promised that he would, then wheeled and stalked off down the street. After he had rounded the corner he lifted his arm and wiped his chin with the sleeve of his coat. Then he stuck his hands deep in his pockets and whistled loudly. But after a moment, at a recollection of sky-blue eyes underneath a sky-blue tam-o'shanter, he chuckled softly. "A Prince! Gee, some Prince!" But his head instinctively went higher at the honor thrust upon him.

When he returned from the store, Dale usually found his mother sitting by the lamp crocheting. But tonight everything was different; scarcely had he stopped at their landing before the little mother, quite transformed, rushed to greet him and tell him the wonderful bit of good fortune.

Before it his own adventure was forgotten.

"And it's only a beginning it is—it's the superintendent he'll be in no time at all, at all," finished Mrs. Lynch.

"And we can move? And I can join the Boy Scouts? And go to camp next summer? And have a pair of roller skates?"

Mrs. Lynch nodded her head to each question. Behind each note of her voice rippled a laugh. "Yes, yes, yes. Sure, it's a wonderful night this is."

"Where's Pop now?"

"Working with the extra shift," the wife answered, proudly.

"Any dumplings?" eagerly.

"And I was forgetting! Bless the heart of you, of course I saved the biggest. 'Twas like a party tonight for I dressed your sister in the beads. It's worn out she is, God love her, with the excitement and trying to keep her wee eyes open 'til her Pop come home. Hushee or you'll waken the lamb now."

Dale was deep in thought choosing the words with which he would tell the good news to the "fellows" on the morrow, his mother was busying herself with the "biggest" dumpling, when a peremptory knock came at the door. With a quick cry Mrs. Lynch dropped her spoon—why should anything intrude upon their joy this night?

A man stood on the threshold presenting a curious figure for he wore a heavy coat over a white duck suit. Where had she seen such a suit before? With a catch at her heart she remembered—at the hospital, that time Dale had been run over. "Oh!" she cried. "My Dan!"

"Mrs. Lynch?" The hospital attendant spoke quickly as one would who had a disagreeable task and must dispose of it without any delay. "Your husband's had an accident—he's alive, but—you'd better come."

Mrs. Lynch stood very still in the centre of the room—her hand clutching her throat as though to stifle the scream that tore it.

"My Dan—hurt!" She trembled but stood very straight. "Quick, Dale, we must go to him. My Dan. No, no, you stay with Beryl. Oh, hurry!" she implored the interne, rushing bareheaded past him down the stairway. "Hurry."

For a few moments Dale stared at the half-open door. In his thirteen years he had experienced the pinch of poverty, even hunger, the pain of injury, but never this overwhelming fear of something, he did not know what. Pop, his big, strong Pop—hurt! Pop, who could swing him even now, that he measured five feet three himself, to his shoulder! Oh, no, no, it could not be true! Someone had made a mistake. Someone had cruelly frightened his mother. Hadn't their luck just come? Hadn't Pop been made a boss?

"Mom-ma!" came Beryl's voice, sleepily, from the other room. "Mom-ma, what's they?" Glad of anything to do Dale rushed to quiet his little sister. He bade her, brokenly, to "never mind and go to sleep," and he pulled the old blanket up tight to her chin, his eyes so blinded with tears that he did not see the waxen head pillowed close to Beryl's.

Then he sat in his mother's chair and dropped his head upon the table and waited, his hands clenched at his side.

"I won't cry! I won't be a baby! Mom'll maybe need me. I'm big now!" he muttered, finding a little comfort in the sound of his own voice.

Poor Robin's Prince; alas, he felt very young and helpless before the trouble which he faced.

Big Dan Lynch, he who had been the fairest and sturdiest of the county of Moira's girlhood, would never work again—as superintendent or even foreman; the rest of his days must be spent in the wheeled chair sent up by the sympathetic Miss Lewis of the Neighborhood Settlement House. It was fixed with a contrivance so that he could move it about the small room.

Little Beryl started school which made up for a great deal that had suddenly been taken from her life, for mother never sat by the lamp, now, or crocheted. She worked at the Settlement House all day and all evening busied herself with her home tasks.

The "lucky dolly" Beryl hid away in paper wrappings. Somehow, young as she was, she knew her mother could not bear the sight of it.

And Dale worked every day at Tony's, going to night school on the evenings when he had used to go to the store. A tightening about the lips, an older seriousness in the lad's eyes alone told what it had cost him to give up his ambition to graduate with his class, perhaps at its head.

Little Robin with the sky-blue eyes was quite forgotten!