Red-Robin | Page 4

was she?" she asked.
"A kid." Little Beryl kindled to the interest of her story. Had not
something very thrilling happened in her simple life--a life the greatest
interest of which was to carry to the store each day the small bundle of
crocheted lace which her mother made. "She was a swell kid. She
played in the park, waitin' for a big man."
"Did she talk to you?" breathlessly.
Beryl avoided this question. The beautiful little girl had not spoken to
her, though she had hung by very close, inviting an approach with
hungry eyes.

"She was just a little kid," loftily. Then, "Ain't the doll mine?"
Mrs. Lynch patted down the outermost garment. "Yes, it's yours it is,
darlin'. At least--" she hesitated over a fleeting sense of justice, "maybe
the little stranger will be a-coming back for her doll. It's a fair bit of
dolly and it's lonesome and weeping the little mother may be this very
minute--"
Beryl reached out eager arms.
"It's an orphan doll. I'll love it hard. Give me it. Oh," with a breath that
was like a whistle. "Ain't she lovely? Mom, is she too lovely for us?"
The timid question brought a quick change in the mother's face, a
kindling of a fire within the mother breast. She straightened her slender
body.
"And if there's anything too good for my girlie I'd like to see it! Isn't
this the land where all men are equal and my girl and boy shall have a
school as good as the best and grow up to be maybe the President
himself?" She repeated the words softly as though they made a creed,
learned carefully and with supreme faith. Why had she come, indeed, to
this crowded, noisy city from her fair home meadows if not for this
promise it held out to her?
"And isn't your brother the head of his class?" she finished
triumphantly. "And it's smarter than ever you'll be yourself with your
little books. Oh, childy!" She caught the little girl, doll and all, into an
impulsive embrace.
From it Beryl wriggled to a practical curiosity as to supper. She sniffed.
Her mother nodded.
"Stew! And with dumplin's--" She made it sound like fairy food.
"Ready to the beating when your father comes."
"Where's Dale? And Pop?"

"It's Dale's night at the store. And Pop'll be comin' along any minute.
I've set the lamp for him."
"I'm hungry," Beryl complained. She sat down cross-legged on the
spotless scrap of carpeting and proceeded with infinite tenderness to
disrobe the doll.
"Do you think she will like it here?" she asked suddenly, looking about
the humble room which for the Lynch's, served as parlor, dining-room
and kitchen. Now its bareness lay wrapped in a kindly shadow through
which glinted diamond sparks from much-scrubbed tin. "It's nice--"
Beryl meditated. She loved this hour, she loved the singing tea-kettle
and the smell of strong soap and her mother's face in the lamplight,
with all the loud noises of the street hushed, and the ugliness outside
hidden by the closed door, against the paintless boards of which had
been nailed a flaming poster inviting the nation's youth to join the
Navy.
"But maybe this home'll be--too different," she finished.
The mother's eyes grew moist with a quick tenderness. Her Beryl, with
this wonder of a dolly in her arms! Her mind flashed over the last
Christmas and the one before that when Beryl had asked Santa Claus
for a "real doll" and had cried on Christmas morning because the cheap
little bit of dolldom which the mother had bought out of her meagre
savings would not open or shut its eyes. And now--the impudent heart
of the blessed child worrying that the home wasn't good enough for the
likes of the doll!
"It's a good home for her where it's loving you are to her. It's the heart
and not the gold that counts. And who knows--maybe it's a bit of luck
the dolly'll be a-bringing."
As though a word of familiar portent had been uttered Beryl lifted a
face upon which was reflected the glow of the little mother's. Babe as
she was, she knew something of the mother's faith in the fickle god of
chance, a faith that helped the little woman over the rough places, that
never failed to brighten her deepest gloom. Did she not staunchly

believe that someday by a turn of good fortune she and her Danny
would know the America and the good things of which they had
dreamed, sitting in the gloaming of their Ireland, their lover's hands
close clasped? But for that hope why would they have left their dear
hillsides with the homely life and the kindly neighbors and good Father
Murphy who had taught her from his own