nch, in
an apologetic whisper, touching her head significantly. "Come here,
Susy," and she motioned the staring child to her. Susy approached with
the hang-back step of a child or a dog not always certain of what he may
get but Mrs. Lynch magically produced a round cookie, fat with currants,
and Susy sprang at her with a quick leap.

The room was heavy with stale air and bare of any comforts. A tattered
First Reader lay on the greasy floor, unwashed dishes cluttered the bare
pine table, on every available shelf and in every corner were piled old
cans and bottles and half-filled paper bags. On a what-not in the corner
a faded bunch of pink paper roses drooped over a cracked vase. The
wallpaper, its ugly pattern mercifully faded, was fantastically streaked
from the dampness, in one corner the ceiling plaster had fallen and
newspapers had been tacked over the laths to keep out the cold.

A sickening revulsion, a longing to escape into the sweet crisp air
swept Robin. She shrank away into a corner for fear the dreadful old
Granny might touch her. But she _must_ say something! She had come here
for a purpose--to know Susy.

At that moment Susy's voice pealed out in a merry, piping laugh--because
she had put her small finger into her cookie and pulled out a fat round
currant! And something in the laugh touched the spark to the mothering
instinct strong in Robin's young heart--the mothering instinct that had
caused her bitter anguish over Cynthia's loss, that had taught her how
to care for her Jimmie, and had given her strength to run away from her
Jimmie that he might have his "chance." She forgot the dirty
surroundings, the old Granny in her rags and her crown of wispy gray
hair, she saw only the child's face, lightened with joy, and laughed
with Susy as Susy held out the currant on the end of an uplifted--and
very dirty--finger.

The ice broken, Susy made friends quickly. She leaned her thin little
self against Robin's knee and stared with rapture into Robin's face.
Like Granny she could not seem to realize that Robin was a Forsyth; to
her she was "a big girl" and big girls did not come to the house now
that Sarah had died. She timidly touched Robin's soft coat sleeve with a
rough, sticky hand and poked at the bright buttons of Robin's blouse,
her eyes round with wonder.

Afterward, after Robin and Mrs. Lynch had, with some difficulty, broken
away from Susy's clinging and Granny's childish lamentations, and were
walki