boy's chin. Upon it she pressed a shy, warm kiss.

"Good-bye, Prince. You will hunt for me, won't you? Promise! Cross your heart!"

Dale, flaming red, confused, promised that he would, then wheeled and stalked off down the street. After he had rounded the corner he lifted his arm and wiped his chin with the sleeve of his coat. Then he stuck his hands deep in his pockets and whistled loudly. But after a moment, at a recollection of sky-blue eyes underneath a sky-blue tam-o'shanter, he chuckled softly. "A Prince! Gee, some Prince!" But his head instinctively went higher at the honor thrust upon him.

When he returned from the store, Dale usually found his mother sitting by the lamp crocheting. But tonight everything was different; scarcely had he stopped at their landing before the little mother, quite transformed, rushed to greet him and tell him the wonderful bit of good fortune.

Before it his own adventure was forgotten.

"And it's only a beginning it is—it's the superintendent he'll be in no time at all, at all," finished Mrs. Lynch.

"And we can move? And I can join the Boy Scouts? And go to camp next summer? And have a pair of roller skates?"

Mrs. Lynch nodded her head to each question. Behind each note of her voice rippled a laugh. "Yes, yes, yes. Sure, it's a wonderful night this is."

"Where's Pop now?"

"Working with the extra shift," the wife answered, proudly.

"Any dumplings?" eagerly.

"And I was forgetting! Bless the heart of you, of course I saved the biggest. 'Twas like a party tonight for I dressed your sister in the beads. It's worn out she is, God love her, with the excitement and trying to keep her wee eyes open 'til her Pop come home. Hushee or you'll waken the lamb now."

Dale was deep in thought choosing the words with which he would tell the good news to the "fellows" on the morrow, his mother was busying herself with the "biggest" dumpling, when a peremptory knock came at the door. With a quick cry Mrs. Lynch dropped her spoon—why should anything intrude upon their joy this night?

A man stood on the threshold presenting a curious figure for he wore a heavy coat over a white duck suit. Where had she seen such a suit before? With a catch at her heart she remembered—at the hospital, that time Dale had been run over. "Oh!" she cried. "My Dan!"

"Mrs. Lynch?" The hospital attendant spoke quickly as one would who had a disagreeable task and must dispose of it without any delay. "Your husband's had an accident—he's alive, but—you'd better come."

Mrs. Lynch stood very still in the centre of the room—her hand clutching her throat as though to stifle the scream that tore it.

"My Dan—hurt!" She trembled but stood very straight. "Quick, Dale, we must go to him. My Dan. No, no, you stay with Beryl. Oh, hurry!" she implored the interne, 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!