rushing bareheaded past him down the stairway.
"_Hurry._"

For a few moments Dale stared at the half-open door. In his thirteen
years he had experienced the pinch of poverty, even hunger, the pain of
injury, but never this overwhelming fear of something, he did not know
what. Pop, his big, strong Pop--hurt! Pop, who could swing him even now,
that he measured five feet three himself, to his shoulder! Oh, no, no,
it could not be true! Someone had made a mistake. Someone had cruelly
frightened his mother. Hadn't their luck just come? Hadn't Pop been made
a boss?

"Mom-ma!" came Beryl's voice, sleepily, from the other room. "Mom-ma,
what's they?" Glad of anything to do Dale rushed to quiet his little
sister. He bade her, brokenly, to "never mind and go to sleep," and he
pulled the old blanket up tight to her chin, his eyes so blinded with
tears that he did not see the waxen head pillowed close to Beryl's.

Then he sat in his mother's chair and dropped his head upon the table
and waited, his hands clenched at his side.

"I _won't_ cry! I _won't_ be a baby! Mom'll maybe need me. I'm big now!"
he muttered, finding a little comfort in the sound of his own voice.

* * * * *

Poor Robin's Prince; alas, he felt very young and helpless before the
trouble which he faced.

Big Dan Lynch, he who had been the fairest and sturdiest of the county
of Moira's girlhood, would never work again--as superintendent or even
foreman; the rest of his days must be spent in the wheeled chair sent up
by the sympathetic Miss Lewis of the Neighborhood Settlement House. It
was fixed with a contrivance so that he could move it about the small
room.

Little Beryl started school which made up for a great deal that had
suddenly been taken from her life, for mother never sat by the lamp,
now, or crocheted. She worked at the Settlement House all day and all
evening busied herself with her home tasks.

The "lucky dolly" Beryl hid away in paper wrappings. Somehow, young as
she was, she knew her mother could not bear the sight of it.

And Dale worked every day at Tony's, going to night school on the
evenings when he had used to go to the store. A tightening about the
lips, an older seriousness in the lad's eyes alone told what it had cost
him to give up his ambition to graduate with his class, perhaps at its
head.

Little Robin with the sky-blue eyes was quite forgotten!

CHAPTER III

THE HOUSE OF FORSYTH