This afternoon mother called on Mrs. Burroughs. She is the lady whose house Ernie broke into with the flying-machine, and I forgot to say how lovely she was about it. “Surprised, of course,” as Ernie admitted, “but so pleasant.”

Mother intended calling yesterday, to arrange about the broken glass, etc.,—for which, fortunately, Uncle George said he would pay,—but she was flat, poor dear, with a nervous headache, and so had to put it off. Ernie was rather shaken, too, and Robin quite excited and feverish.

As he continued to have a little “temperature” this morning, I did not give him his reading lesson till afternoon. He is really getting on very nicely, when one considers the disadvantages against which he has to fight;—not only his ill health, but he has had so many stories read to him, and is so far advanced for his age in other ways, that it is hard for him to read:—“I see a Cat. Does the Cat see me?” If he did not wish to crush Georgie’s rising conceit, I think we would have a struggle teaching him.

He said to me to-day when the lesson was over,—“Oh, Ellie, I do hate cats,—all but Rosebud!” and sighed prodigiously. It is amusing to hear Robin sigh. He is such a little boy, and the sigh is so very big. I told him he would make an invaluable passenger aboard a sailing vessel, for, if the wind died down, it would only be necessary for him to sigh once or twice to blow the ship right into port.

This idea tickled him mightily, and he sighed again even louder than before, and then he said he would tell me a story. I love Bobsie’s stories,—they are so original. Here is the one he told this afternoon:

“Once there was a Crusader, and his name was Max, and he lived up a tree in the Holy Land.”

“What sort of a tree, Robin?” I asked.

“It was a nut-tree,” Bobs replied, “and there were chestnuts on it, and hickory-nuts, and peanuts, too. The Crusader and the squirrels what lived with him used to eat them all day long. But one time the squirrels had gone out on a visit, and the Crusader was sitting on a branch alone, and he saw a Griffin go by. And the Griffin was muttering and murmuring to his self, ‘Oh, you wait, my fine lady, till I get home, and then won’t I have you for my tea! Oh! ho! my fine madam, just you wait, and then we’ll see!’ So Max, he knew right away that that meant a Princess; and he slid down the trunk of the tree, an’ he ran right up to him, an’ he shouted in his ear,—

“‘Where’s that Princess you have hid?’

“And the Griffin jumped, but then he pertended it was only a burr what he had in his foot, and he said,—

“‘Princess? Princess? I haven’t any Princess, my dear fellow. What are you talkin’ about?’

“And just then Max he heard a sobbing sound, which was the Princess weeping, and he shouted,—

“‘Oh my! not much you haven’t! I hear her crying this very instant, an’ if you don’t tell me where she is, I shall cut your head slam bang off!’

“But the Griffin he was v-e-r-y clever, and he said, ‘What do you mean, old nosey? Why, that’s only my sick grandmother that you hear. She has an influenza, and so she’s got to sniff!’

“But the Crusader was not so easily fooled as all that, and he took up his sword, an’ he cut off the Griffin’s head! bang!! And then he looked around for the Princess, an’ after a while he found her in a pit what the Griffin had dug. And then the Crusader, and the Princess, and the squirrels all went and lived in the Griffin’s castle, ’cause the Princess didn’t know how to climb trees, and anyhow Max was tired of nuts.”

Just as Bobsie finished his story mother came in from her call, and as we wanted to hear all about it, she took him in her lap in the big rocker, while I seated myself on the hassock at her feet. Mrs. Burroughs, she said, was charming,—so cordial and friendly, and would not listen to anything about “damages.” She seemed endlessly amused at Ernie’s escapade, and laughed and laughed over it. Then she would break off to apologise, and say she fully realised how great the shock must have been to us;—till some freshly funny aspect of the adventure would strike her, she would laugh again, and mother would laugh, too.

Finally they began to talk of other things. It seems that Mrs. Burroughs had had a little boy who was an invalid. His name was Francis. He was ill for five years with some spinal trouble, and died when he was seven. Mother told me the sadder details later, for Robin takes his illness so much as a matter of course that we never like to say anything before him that would be apt to make him realise, or arouse apprehensions. Mrs. Burroughs’ husband had died some years previous, and so she was left quite alone, except for an aunt, an old lady of nearly seventy, who fortunately was out making calls Tuesday afternoon, and so escaped the excitement of Ernie’s invasion.

Mrs. Burroughs then asked mother a number of questions about Robin. She said she had often noticed his little pale face at the nursery window as she passed our house, and she wondered if he ever got out. Mother answered that we could not let him go very often this winter, for he took cold so easily, and his crutches seemed to tire him.

Then Mrs. Burroughs flushed a beautiful rose colour, hesitated, and said, in a breathless little way, that her boy, Francis, had had a wheel-chair for the last couple of years of his illness from which he had gotten a great deal of comfort and pleasure. She had often wondered, seeing Robin at the window, if it would not be nice for him, too. Half a dozen times, she said, she had been on the point of sending it over.

“And it shall come to him this evening. I don’t know what has held me back so long! You will let your dear little son accept it as a gift from my Francis, will you not, Mrs. Graham?” she pleaded. “Children have no feeling about taking presents from one another,—and I should be so very, very glad. For Francis always loved to give!”

Of course, mother could make but one answer,—and how splendid the chair will be for Robin! Now he can get out on the mild, sunny days, which was impossible for him when he was dependent only on Ernie’s sled. Dear little fellow!—he is delighted with the prospect, and we have great hopes of the good it will do him.

And how kind of Mrs. Burroughs to think of it, and offer it the way she did,—without any hint of patronage or condescension. She also asked with what mother called “a hungry look” if she might not run in sometime and make Bobsie’s acquaintance, and she invited Ernie and me to call upon her, too. I shall love to go, and even Ernie admits that perhaps it won’t be so bad, since Mrs. Burroughs seems to be “a delicate sort of person” who understands how “others feel.”

Really it is rather pathetic the way Ernie has brightened up since we have had the offer of the chair. I think in her secret heart she considers herself responsible;—a sort of unappreciated dea ex machina, as it were. And certainly it is an unlooked for and lovely end to what might have proven a very terrible adventure.