drew the girl to him.

"I'm not laughing. I'm only marvelling at the leaps and bounds with
which your education has gone forward. Some people die at an old age
without acquiring one smallest part of the human understanding you are
learning through these--notions--of yours."

Robin made a little face. "Notions! Beryl calls them 'crazy ideas.'
_Someone else_ called them an 'experiment.' Dear Mother Lynch is the
_only_ one who really believes in what I want to do. You see, I just
want the people here to think that a Forsyth cares whether they're happy
or not. Dale says I didn't start right and maybe I didn't--but
anyway--"--She nodded toward the door as though Sophie might still be on
the threshold, "_they're_ a beginning!"

Her guardian did not answer this and looked so strange that Robin went
no further in her confidences. Perhaps something had displeased him, she
must wait until some other time to tell him about Dale and his model and
her visit to Frank Norris.

Back in the library, before the crackling fire, Robin begged Beryl to
play for her guardian.

"She's wonderful," she whispered while Beryl was getting the violin.
"She makes you feel all funny inside."

Beryl stood in the shadow and played. Robin, watching her guardian,
thrilled with satisfaction when the man's face betrayed that he, too,
felt "all funny inside" under the magic of Beryl's bow.

"Come here, my girl," he commanded when Beryl stopped. He bent a
searching look upon her. "Come here and sit down and tell me about
yourself."

"Didn't I say she's wonderful?" chirped Robin, triumphantly.

The lawyer's adroit questioning brought out Beryl's story--of the simple
home in the tenement from which her mother shut out all that was
coarsening and degrading, stirring her child's mind and her tastes with
dreams she persistently cherished against disheartening odds; of the
Belgian musician who had first taught her small fingers and fired her
ambitions for only the best in the art; of school and the lessons she
devoured because she craved knowledge and the advantages of possessing
it.

"How long have you lived here?"

"We came last summer. Dale wanted to work where there were machines and
he got a job in the Forsyth Mills."

"You are planning to go back to New York and study?"

Beryl's face clouded. "Sometime. But I can't until I earn the money, and
it takes such a lot."

"Yes, and courage, too," added the lawyer softly, as though he were
speakin