Robin found running away amazingly simple. Poor Jimmie, at her urging, went out quite unsuspecting. She was so excited and there was so much to be done at the last moment, that she had no time to think what the parting with all she loved so dearly must mean to her.

Promptly at three o'clock Cornelius Allendyce tapped on the door. His face was very red and moist and his hand, as he reached out for Robin's bag, shook, but Robin did not notice all that; she slipped quickly through the door and shut it behind her, as though fearful that at the last moment she might find it impossible to go.

Out in the thin sunshine, whirring through the traffic of the crowded streets, neither spoke for breathlessness. Cornelius Allendyce stared at the buildings and swallowed at regular intervals to steady his nerves—a trick he had always found most helpful in important legal trials. Robin kept her eyes glued on the back of the taxi driver's head but he might have had two heads and one upside down for all she noticed. Her hands in her lap were clenched very tight and her lips were pressed in a straight, thin, resolute line.

But as they kept on past Forty-second street and headed toward Central Park West the lawyer explained that he was taking her to his own home for the night.

"My sister will make you quite comfortable. Tomorrow we will go out to Wassumsic." He did not say that it was important, too, to give Madame Forsyth ample opportunity to get away from Gray Manor.

Robin drew a long breath and relaxed. It had taken so very much courage to run away that she had little left with which to face her new life. Tomorrow it might be easier.

Miss Effie Allendyce took her under her wing in a fluttery, mothery sort of a way with a great many "my dear's."

"I suppose," the lawyer had said, looking at the two, "you, Effie, will have to get Miss Forsyth some clothes tomorrow—"

"Clothes," Robin cried, astonished. "I—brought some."

"Well, you probably ought to have some other kind. You see, my dear, you are a Forsyth of Gray Manor now." He turned to his sister. "Effie, can you get all she needs—everything, before tomorrow at three o'clock?"

Effie's eyes danced at such a task—indeed, she could. She knew a shop where she could buy everything that a girl might need.

"Well, I'll leave you two to make out lists. Isn't that what you have to do?"

So, for a few hours the making of these amazing lists kept Robin's thoughts from that little fifth floor home and Jimmie. Miss Effie began with shoes and finished with hats, with little abbreviations in brackets to include caps and scarfs and all sorts of things. "It is very cold in Wassumsic," she explained, "and you will 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, talking about giving him "his chance" and at such cost—and promising that she would not cry again. "There's bravery for you!" muttered the lawyer aloud.

He believed that Miss Effie's lists of finery and knick-knacks held little attraction for the girl.

He recalled Madame Forsyth's scornful "that other branch of the family." Yet this James Forsyth and Gordon had lived for years and often in want in New York City, and had never approached Madame for as much as a penny. Robin had said Jimmie couldn't paint if he were rich. Could he paint if he lost her?

Suddenly Cornelius Allendyce had a vivid understanding of the tie that bound these two. And it was unthinkable that this man would let the girl go and do nothing. Yet it was not of any possible embarrassment he might suffer that Cornelius Allendyce thought at this moment; it was of the heartbreak of the father. He had not considered him at all; carried away by a mad impulse he had let himself listen to a child and had lost his own sense of justice. Why, it had been rank robbery! He must go to this man at once. Muttering to himself he went in search of his hat and coat.

For the third time the little lawyer climbed the flights of stairs at 22 Patchin Place. And this time, so eager was he to square himself with Robin's Jimmie, he ran up the steps. He knocked twice and when no one answered he opened the door quietly and walked in.

A man sat at the little table, his head dropped in his outflung arms. Cornelius Allendyce knew it was Jimmie. Another man stood over him, his face flushed with impatience. "Mr. Tony," thought the lawyer. He was evidently just drawing breath after a heated argument.

"Pardon my intrusion, gentlemen. I knocked but I do not think you heard me." Allendyce stopped short, for his usual measured words seemed out of place at this moment. "I am Cornelius Allendyce," he finished humbly and guiltily. "I came back to—explain."

James Forsyth made a lightning-quick movement as though he would spring at the little lawyer's throat. Mr. Tony held him back.

"Jimmie—wait. Let him talk."

"It was Miss Robin's wish to slip away without telling you. She said you would not let her go and she had quite made up her mind to give you—what she calls—your chance. She has an idea that she ties you down—"

Jimmie choked as a sob strangled in his throat. His anger suddenly melted to abjection. Mr. Tony laid a comforting hand on his shoulder and turned to the lawyer.

"The girl is right. She's a wonderful little thing. She always could see further ahead than her Dad. I have been telling my pal that this is the best thing all around that could happen—a fine bit of luck for everyone. Robin will go up to Gray Manor and be as happy and safe as can be and her father can travel and work—the way Robin wants him to. Robin took rather unusual means to gain her end but—well, she knew what she was doing."

Jimmie turned to Cornelius Allendyce and studied his face with a desperate keenness.

"She isn't like other children," he began slowly. "Poor little crooked kiddie. She's sensitive. I've kept her away from everything that could hurt her. I've tried—to make up to her. I thought she was happy; I did not know she guessed—or knew—"

Mr. Tony had taken a few steps down the room. He wheeled now and came back with a set expression on his face as though he had to say something disagreeable and must get it over with.

"Jimmie, suppose, just for once, you look your soul straight in the eye—honest. Now isn't it the artist heart of you that's hurt by Robin's crooked little body—and not the child? Don't you keep her shut up in here because, when people stare at her—you suffer? Have you been fair to her? Oh, yes—you love her, all right. Well, then, let her go. Robin thinks she's giving you your chance—well, I say, give the girl her own."

"I tell you Robin's different—she doesn't want money or clothes!"

"Well, pretty things—and good food—can make even a 'different' girl's heart lighter. Come, old man, go off with me on this cruise and work your head off and at the end of the year—if Robin's not happy there, well, you can make other plans. I'm like Robin, I believe that give you a year, you'll do something rather big."

James Forsyth suddenly lifted a face so boyishly helpless, so defeated, that Allendyce's heart went out to him. He understood, all at once, what little Robin had meant when she had said, "You don't know Jimmie!" He certainly was not like other men.

"I feel such a—quitter. I promised Robin's mother—I'd make up to the child for her being lame—the way she would have, if she'd lived. And I've failed. Why, only last night she went to bed hungry." There followed a moment of tense silence, then the man went on dully, in a tone that implied yielding. "I suppose I may know all the circumstances that led up to—this."

Cornelius Allendyce proceeded to tell everything from the day of his interview with Madame to the moment of his consternation upon discovering that Gordon Forsyth was a girl and not a boy. He repeated word for word Robin's and his conspiring; he described their flight and Robin's break down in his library.

"She had not lost courage—oh, no. But she was thinking of you. She was afraid you'd forget to take your hot milk at night or something like that," he finished simply.

There were other details for the lawyer to explain to James Forsyth, having to do with allowances and schooling. Then, when everything had been said that was necessary to be said, James Forsyth rose wearily.

"If that's all, I'd like it if you two would leave me here—alone." He held out his hand to Mr. Allendyce. "Understand, if she's not happy—"

"Our agreement ends."