ened on one side into a sitting room with a bay window, on
the other into a tiny bathroom, shining and gleaming with nickel and
tile.

"Oh, everything's _lovely_," and Robin ecstatically clasped her hands.
"Only what'll I ever do with everything so big!"

Cornelius Allendyce laughed at her dismay. To be sure he had not spent
his life in such tiny quarters as the bird cage and he could not
understand the girl's state of mind.

"My dear, after a little everything will seem quite natural. And
remember--everything is at your command. This is your home. You are
Gordon Forsyth. You will not have time to be lonely."

Robin's serious face suddenly broke into a bright smile. She patted the
garland of roses which held back the silk hangings.

"I just had the funniest feeling, as if I were not me at all but all of
a sudden someone else. Ever since I was a very little girl I've often
played that I lived a make-believe story--I make it like all the fairy
stories jumbled together. And I fit all the people I know into the
different characters. Jimmie lets me play it because I am alone so much
and it keeps me happy. Sometimes he even plays it with me. It makes
horrid things seem nice. And Jimmie never wanted me to know the boys and
girls at school--because I'm lame, I guess--so I always pretended things
about them and gave them names. You should have seen Bluebeard." She
laughed at the recollection. "And now I'm going on playing. I'm the
little beggar-maid who awakens to find her self in the castle. Do you
suppose there's a fairy godmother somewhere? And--a prince?"

And Cornelius Allendyce who had never read a fairy story in his life,
let alone acted one, laughed with her.

"Yes, this is another chapter in your story."

"Oh, and don't you wish we could just peek to the end and see how it all
turns out? But that isn't fair. And we couldn't--anyway."

Her new guardian shook his head. "No, we couldn't--anyway."

CHAPTER VII

BERYL

A bell tinkling somewhere in the house wakened Robin the next morning.
Through the flowered chintz curtains of her window the sun shone with a
warmth out of all keeping with the time of the year, throwing such a
joyous glow about everything in the room that she rubbed her eyes to be
sure she was not dreaming.

The evening before, everything had seemed so strange that Robin had not
been able to take in small things; now an immense curiosity to explore
Gray Manor, and the grounds that wer