yl's cheek touched.

"He was very nice to me. Mother, are he and--and Robin--awfully good
friends?"

"What's in your heart, my girl?"

"Mom, couldn't Robin marry almost _anybody_? She's such a dear and she's
so rich and she's travelled around so much."

"Why, bless the heart of her, she's nothing but a child!"

"Mother!" Beryl's voice rang impatiently. "We'll just _never_ grow up in
your eyes! Why, Robin's twenty. Well, I should think _anyone'd_ like Tom
Granger."

"Oh, my dear!" And Mother Moira, reading the girl's heart with her wise
mother-eyes, gave a tiny sigh. Must the shadow of a heartache touch the
splendid friendship between these two, Beryl and Robin?

The thought lingered with her while she watched the girls come hand in
hand out to the orchard from the drive where Robin had left her
roadster. Beryl had only been home for three days and Robin came out to
the farm at every opportunity.

Her girls--her tall, handsome Beryl with the strong shoulders and the
free swing of her, and little Robin, with her deep blue eyes and her
tender lips and her alive hair, and the little limp that gave her walk
the appearance of eagerness.

There was still so much to talk about that the two girls lingered under
the trees while Mother Moira swung gently and listened and watched the
dear young faces. Beryl had been the guest for a weekend at a duke's
house; Robin had spent a month in the Canadian Rockies with her Jimmie;
Dale had brought home all sorts of tales of adventures from an
expedition he had made with an engineering gang into the fastnesses of
South America, and Beryl had been asked to tour in the fall with the
Cincinnati Symphony and was going to accept. Their chatter came back
then to Wassumsic and the new hospital and the library and the new
teachers, who were Smith College graduates, and Sophie Mack who had
started a Girl Scout troop, and the new athletic field at the House of
Laughter.

"Bless me, it's forgetting the supper I am, and Dale coming!" cried
Mother Moira, springing to quick life.

"And Dale has a wonderful secret to tell, too," laughed Robin, her eyes
shining.

Beryl looked at her friend curiously--Robin had the "all-tight-inside"
look that Beryl remembered from the old days at the Manor.

"Do you know the secret?" she asked.

Robin's face flushed rose-red. "Y-yes. But I promised Dale I wouldn't
tell. We both want to see your mother's face--when she hears it."

"Well, I think you're me