so dearly must mean to her.

Promptly at three o'clock Cornelius Allendyce tapped on the door. His
face was very red and moist and his hand, as he reached out for Robin's
bag, shook, but Robin did not notice all that; she slipped quickly
through the door and shut it behind her, as though fearful that at the
last moment she might find it impossible to go.

Out in the thin sunshine, whirring through the traffic of the crowded
streets, neither spoke for breathlessness. Cornelius Allendyce stared at
the buildings and swallowed at regular intervals to steady his nerves--a
trick he had always found most helpful in important legal trials. Robin
kept her eyes glued on the back of the taxi driver's head but he might
have had two heads and one upside down for all she noticed. Her hands in
her lap were clenched very tight and her lips were pressed in a
straight, thin, resolute line.

But as they kept on past Forty-second street and headed toward Central
Park West the lawyer explained that he was taking her to his own home
for the night.

"My sister will make you quite comfortable. Tomorrow we will go out to
Wassumsic." He did not say that it was important, too, to give Madame
Forsyth ample opportunity to get away from Gray Manor.

Robin drew a long breath and relaxed. It had taken so very much courage
to run away that she had little left with which to face her new life.
Tomorrow it might be easier.

Miss Effie Allendyce took her under her wing in a fluttery, mothery sort
of a way with a great many "my dear's."

"I suppose," the lawyer had said, looking at the two, "you, Effie, will
have to get Miss Forsyth some clothes tomorrow--"

"Clothes," Robin cried, astonished. "I--brought some."

"Well, you probably ought to have some other kind. You see, my dear, you
are a Forsyth of Gray Manor now." He turned to his sister. "Effie, can
you get all she needs--everything, before tomorrow at three o'clock?"

Effie's eyes danced at such a task--indeed, she could. She knew a shop
where she could buy everything that a girl might need.

"Well, I'll leave you two to make out lists. Isn't that what you have to
do?"

So, for a few hours the making of these amazing lists kept Robin's
thoughts from that little fifth floor home and Jimmie. Miss Effie began
with shoes and finished with hats, with little abbreviations in brackets
to include caps and scarfs and all sorts of things. "It is very cold in
Wassumsic," she explained, "and you wil