ith a dress as good as the next one.
Wait! Wait!" She flew into the tiny bedroom, returning in a moment with
a small box in her hands. From it she lifted a string of round green
beads and held them laughingly before Beryl's staring eyes.

"My beads! You shall wear them this night. It's the good old Father's
blessing." She clasped them about Beryl's neck, fingering them tenderly.

"Pretty beads. Pretty beads," cried the little girl.

Suddenly quieted by a rush of memories Mrs. Lynch sat down and took
Beryl upon her lap. "Beryl darlin', was the likes of that other little
girl--the one who forgot the dolly--fine and beautiful?"

"Oh, yes!" The child's voice carried a note of wonder.

"And you shall be fine and beautiful, too, Moira Lynch's own girl, just
as I used to dream for my own self, the selfish likes o' me. You shall
go to school and learn from good books. Didn't the old Father tell me of
the fine schools he had seen when he visited his sister in America? And
anybody can go--anybody!"

Little Beryl felt that it was a solemn moment. She lifted serious eyes.
"I promise," she drawled, with a gravity out of all proportion to her
six years, "I promise to go to school and learn lots like Dale and be
fine and boo'ful so's my 'dopted dolly will like me as well as--that
other kid. I've gotta be good 'nough for her. So there."

The child could not comprehend the obstacles which might threaten such a
standard; she stared bravely into the unblinking eyes of the doll who
smiled back her graven smile.

Then: "I'm hungry," she declared, suddenly deciding that dumplings were
more important than anything else. "And can my Dolly sit in Pop's seat?"

"That she can," cried the mother, going to her "mixin'." "And what a gay
supper it will be--with the new dolly and the pretty beads and the
dumplin's. Oh, Himself a foreman!"

CHAPTER II

A PRINCE

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