.

"That's just the way I'm made," the child answered, quite indifferent to
the shocked note in the boy's voice. "I can walk and run, but I go
crooked."

"What's your name?"

"Robin Forsyth." She made it sound like "Wobbin Force."

"Oh, Wobbin Force. Funny name, isn't it? And what's your Ma and Pa going
to say to you for running off?"

Putting a small hand trustingly into the boy's big one, the child
skipped along at his side. "Oh, nothing," she answered, lost in an
admiring contemplation of her rescuer. "What's they, anyway?"

"A Ma? Don't you know what your mother is?"

Little Robin met his astonishment with a ripple of laughter. "Oh a
_mother_! I had a lovely, lovely mother once but she's gone away--to
Heaven. And is a Pa a Jimmie?"

"A--what?" Dale had never met such a strange child.

"'Cause Jimmie's my Parent. I call him Parent sometimes and sometimes I
call him Jimmie."

If his companion had not been so very small Dale might have suspected an
attempt at "kidding." He glanced sidewise and suspiciously at her but
all he saw was a cherub face framed in a tilted sky-blue tam-o'shanter
and straggling ends of flaming red hair.

"Jimmie won't scold me. _He'd_ want me to try to find Cynthia." Robin
smothered a sigh. "He wasn't home anyway."

"D'you live all alone? You and your Jimmie?"

"Oh, yes, only Aunt Milly's downstairs and Grandpa Jones is 'cross the
hall, so I'm never 'fraid. They're not my really truly aunt's and
grandfather's--I just call them that. And Jimmie leaves the light
burning anyway. What's your name? And are you very old? Are you a man
like Jimmie?"

Dale, warming under the adoration he saw on the small face, felt very
big and very manly. He returned the little squeeze that tugged on his
hand.

"Oh, I'm a big fellow," he answered.

"You look awful nice," the little girl pursued. "Just like one of my
make-believe Princes. I wish you lived with Jimmie and me. I wouldn't
mind Cynthia then."

"But the Princes never lived with the little girls in the stories, you
know," argued Dale, finding it a very pleasant and unusual sensation to
act the role of a Prince even to a very small girl. "You have to find
me, you see."

Miss Robin jumped with joy. "Oh, goody, goody! I'll always make b'lieve
you are a Prince and I'll find you and you must find me, too. You will,
won't you?"

"You just bet I will," promised Dale, easily. "Here's your street." He
stopped to study the house numbers. Sudd