Beryl waved Robin off to the Granger's with a forced cheerfulness. Left alone, she sat in the room she shared with Robin and stared unhappily at the disarray left from the frenzied packing and unpacking.

Nothing exciting like going off to a house-party of young people with two bags full of lovely clothes would ever, ever happen to her!

In fact nothing exciting would ever happen. She'd just go on and on wanting things all her life.

She did not envy Robin, for Robin was such a dear no one could ever envy her, but she wished she could have just some of the chances Robin had—and did not appreciate. She straightened. Oh, with just one of Robin's dresses, couldn't she sail into that drawing room at Wyckham and hold her own with the proudest of them? Mrs. Granger and the haughty Alicia had no terrors for her, and if they tried to snub her, she'd put her violin under her chin and then—

The peal of the doorbell reverberated through the quiet house. Beryl heard Harkness' slow step, as he went to the door; then it climbed the stairs and stopped outside of Robin's room.

"Miss Beryl—a telegram."

"For me?" Beryl drew back. She had never received a telegram in her life and the yellow envelope frightened her.

"The boy said as to sign here."

Beryl wrote her name mechanically in letters that zigzagged crazily. Harkness lingered while she tore open the envelope, concern struggling with curiosity on his face.

"It's from Robin's guardian. He—he wants—oh, Harkness, am I reading right? He says I must come to New York at once—tonight, if I can. He'll meet me—it's extremely important. Why, Harkness, what in the world has happened? It doesn't sound awful, does it? Did you ever know of anything so mysterious in your life?"

Harkness never had. He read the telegram with brows drawn together.

"Mebbe they left out something," he suggested, turning the sheet and scrutinizing its back.

"Well, I'll have to go." Beryl's voice betrayed her deep excitement. "I can catch the evening train. Oh, Harkness, how often I've watched that go out and wished I was on it! And now I'm going to be. I'm going to New York! Harkness, be a dear and hurry some dinner, will you? I'll pack. And oh, will you take a note to mother for me? I'll not have time to stop. Or wait—I won't tell her I'm going until I know what it's for—she'd worry. Isn't that best?"

"Yes, that's best. I'll get you some nice dinner, don't you fret. And Joe'll take you down to the station in the truck, he will, for like as not he'll be meetin' the train anyways for his wife's niece who lives Boston way. She's a-goin' to help Joe's wife—"

"Oh, that'll be nice. But please hurry, Harkness. That boy's waiting for his book. And I can't think."

Two hours later Beryl sat upright on the plush seat of the evening train, her old suitcase at her feet packed with every garment she possessed.

"This is more fun than all your old house-parties," she apostrophized the black square of window, which dimly reflected her glowing face. Then she lost herself in a delicious "I wonder" as to why she had been summoned so mysteriously to New York.

Cornelius Allendyce and Miss Effie met her at the end of her wonderful journey, no part of which had wearied her in the least, and their smiling faces put at rest the tiny misgiving that had persisted that she might be walking into some sort of a scheme to separate her from Robin.

"I am glad you got my telegram in time to catch tonight's train. I've made an important appointment for you tomorrow morning with a friend of mine." But not another word concerning the mystery would the lawyer say. Both he and his sister went about with a queer smile, and treated Beryl as fond (and rich) parents might a good child on Christmas Eve.

The next morning Miss Effie started the two of them off for the "appointment" with a fluttery excitement bordering on hysteria.

"You'll think, my dear, you've rubbed Aladdin's lamp," she whispered to Beryl, patting down the neat white collar of Beryl's coat.

Beryl thought of her words when she followed Mr. Allendyce through a long dim room, crowded with treasures of fabric and ceramic, rich in coloring, fragrant of oriental perfumes.

"He's a collector," Cornelius Allendyce explained, nodding sideways and hurrying on to a room in the back, as though their errand had nothing to do with the curious things about them.

"Ah, there, Eugene, we're here! Miss Lynch, this is Eugene Dominez, known to two continents as that rare specimen, an honest collector; to me, the only man I can't beat at chess!"

A very small man rose from a great carved chair. He had a thin, leathery face with an exaggerated nose, stretched out as though from sniffing for curios in dusty dim corners. When he smiled his eyes shut and his mouth twisted until he looked like a jolly little gnome.

"Ah-ha! You admit you cannot beat me!" He spoke with a soft accent. "And this is the little lady who owns the green beads." And he peered closely at Beryl.

The green beads! She had not thought of them once.

"Sit down. Sit down. I will ask you to tell me a story. Then I will tell you a story. First, my dear young lady, tell me where you found the beads?" As he spoke, he drew open a drawer, and took from it the envelope Robin had given to her guardian.

Beryl answered briefly, for the simple reason that she found difficulty managing her tongue.

"An—an old priest—back in Ireland—gave them—to us. He'd found them in an antique shop in London."

"Ah, so! Just so! So! So!" crowed the gnome-like man, jumping up and down in his great chair. "Now I will tell you a story."

"Once upon a time, as you say, a beautiful Queen of the fifteenth century, while travelling through a forest, came upon a roving band of gypsies. So great was her beauty that the gypsy chief gave to her a necklace of precious jade, upon each bead of which had been tooled a crown, so infinitesimal as to be seen only through a strong lens. The chief told the fair Queen that the necklace brought good fortune to whosoever possessed it. But so proud was the young Queen of the precious beads and the good fortune that was to be hers that she boasted of them to her Court and aroused the envy of many until a knave among her courtiers stole them from her. For generations these beads, the workmanship of a Magyar artisan, have passed from owner to owner, always mysteriously, for, because of the good fortune they had power to bestow, no one parted with them except from the most dire necessity, and only lost them through theft. Ah," he held up one of the glowing green globes, "the stories they could tell of greed and dishonor and cunning! The lies that have been told for them! And an old priest found them at last! It is many years since there has been any trace." He stared at Beryl as though to see through her into the past. Then he roused quickly and shook his shoulders. "They have hung about the necks of crowned people, good people—and wicked people. Perhaps they have brought good fortune—as the Magyar chieftain said they would. Who knows? You, my dear—you are a girl with a sensible head on a pair of straight shoulders—tell me, do you care more for the superstition of this necklace—than for the money I will pay you for it—say, fifteen thousand dollars?"

Beryl stood up so suddenly that her chair tumbled backward, making a crashing noise in the subdued stillness of the little room.

"Are you joking?" she asked in a queer, choky voice.

"No, he is not joking. And I told you he is known the world over as an honest collector," broke in Cornelius Allendyce.

"Fifteen—thousand—dollars! Why, that's an awfully big amount, isn't it?" Beryl appealed helplessly to the lawyer. "Why—of course I'll sell it—if you're sure it's what you think it is. I—I don't want—"

The little collector handed her one of the beads and a strong magnifying glass. "Look!" he commanded. Beryl obeyed. There, quite plainly, she made out a tiny crown.

She laughed hysterically. "I see it! I thought that was a scratch. I never noticed it was on every one. Oh, how queer! A queen wore these!" She rolled the bead slowly in the palm of her hand. Then she handed it back. "But I'd much rather have the money than the beads even if a dozen queens wore them." Her sound practicalness rang harshly in the exotic atmosphere of the room.

"I explained to Mr. Dominez your situation—and your ambition," Cornelius Allendyce put in almost apologetically.

"Mr. Allendyce will represent you in this deal, Miss Lynch, if you care to think the sale over. However, I am giving you a final offer. You are young and—"

Beryl reached out both hands with childish impulsiveness. "Oh, I want the money now! I want to spend it. I want—oh, you don't know all I want—" She stopped abruptly, confused by the smiles on both men's faces.

"Mr. Dominez will give you a partial payment in cash and the rest I will deposit in the bank to your credit," explained Cornelius Allendyce. "You need not feel ashamed of your excitement, my dear; fortune like this does not come often to anyone. It's hard, indeed, not to believe that the little beads have magic."

"I'm dreaming. I'm just plain dreaming and I'll wake up in a minute and find I'm Beryl Lynch, poor as ever!" Beryl whispered to herself as she followed Robin's guardian out into the sunshine of the street. She felt of her bulging pocketbook, into which she had put the roll of bills the little collector had smilingly given her, and which Robin's guardian had counted over, quite seriously. It felt real but it just couldn't be true—

"Now where, my dear? You ought to make this day one you'll never forget."

"Don't I have to go right back to Wassumsic? Oh, then—then—can I go to see Jacques Henri and tell him? I know the way—I can take the Ninth Avenue Elevated—or—Would it be very foolish if I took a taxi?" Beryl colored furiously.

"Not at all, Miss Beryl, not at all. Take the taxi and keep 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 happenings of the morning.

"And don't you see what it means? I can begin to study at once! Right this minute! And, oh, how I'll work and practice and learn until—"

She caught up the old man's violin and its bow and drew it across the strings.

"Play!" commanded Jacques Henri, without so much as a word for the Aladdin-lamp tale she had told him.

Beryl played and as she played she wished with all her might she could summon the power that had been hers on Christmas night. She wanted to play for Jacques Henri as she had played then. But she could not.

"Stop!"

Beryl laid the violin down.

The old man scowled at her until she shifted nervously under his searching eyes.

"Your fingers—they are clever, your ear is true—but there is nothing—of you—in what you play! Do you know what I mean?"

He did not wait for Beryl to answer; he went on, with a shake of his great head and his eyes still fixed upon her.

"You come to me and tell me your good fortune and what you will do; how you can study and you can work and you can learn to make good music—and you have no word for what that money will mean to your saint of a mother—aye, the best woman God ever made! Shame to you, selfish girl, that you should put your ambition before her dreams!"

The color dyed Beryl's face. "I never thought—" she muttered, then stopped abruptly, ashamed of her own admission.

"No, you never thought! Do you ever think much beyond yourself?" Then, afraid that he had spoken too harshly, he laid his hand affectionately upon Beryl's shoulder. "But you are young, my dear, and youth is careless. Jacques Henri knows that there is good in you—my eyes are wise and I can see into your heart. It is an honest little heart—you will heed in time. Ambition is a greedy thing—watch out that you keep it in your clever head and do not let it wrap its hard sinews about your heart, crushing all that is beautiful there. Listen to me, child; think you that your music can reach into the souls of people if you do not feel that music in your own good soul? Your fingers may be clever and your body strong, but your music will be cold, cold, if the heart inside you is a little, cold, mean thing! Many's the one, I grant you, content to feed the passing plaudits of the crowd, but not the master—he must go further, he must give of himself to all that they may carry something beautiful of his gift away in their hearts. That is the master. That is music."

Beryl, always so ready in self-defense, stood mute before the old man's charge. She had been scolded too often by this dear recluse to resent it; she had, too, faith in anything he might say.

Then: "You just ought to know Robin," she burst out, irrelevantly, eager that her old teacher should believe that, even though she might be a selfish, thoughtless girl herself, she could recognize and respect the good qualities in others.

"Forgive your old friend if he has hurt you. Go now to your blessed mother and lay your good fortune at her feet. That I might see her face!"

"And if she wants to use—some of the money, will you help me?" asked Beryl, in a meek voice.

"Ah, most surely. And proudly."

Beryl rode back to Miss Erne's in a contritely humble mood.

"I wish there were some sort of medicine one could take to make them better inside their hearts! I wouldn't care how nasty it tasted," she mourned, impatient at the long, hard climb that must be hers if she ever made of herself what her Jacques Henri wanted.

All of Miss Effie's coaxing could not keep Beryl from taking the afternoon train to Wassumsic.

"I must tell my mother about the beads—at once!" she answered, firmly.