Red-Robin

Red-Robin, by Jane Abbott

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Title: Red-Robin
Author: Jane Abbott
Illustrator: Harriet Roosevelt Richards
Release Date: August 16, 2006 [EBook #19057]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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RED-ROBIN BY JANE ABBOTT
AUTHOR OF KEINETH, HIGHACRES, APRILLY, Etc.
With Illustrations By HARRIET ROOSEVELT RICHARDS
GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Made in the United States of America
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COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
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[Illustration: THE EFFECT WAS VERY CHRISTMASY--Page 196]
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TO BETSY
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Prologue--A Story Before the Story 11 I. The Orphan Doll 19 II. A Prince 28 III. The House of Forsyth 39 IV. Red-Robin 49 V. Jimmie 61 VI. The Forsyth Heir 70 VII. Beryl 79 VIII. Robin Asserts Herself 90 IX. The Lynchs 103 X. The Lady of the Rushing Waters 114 XI. Pot Roast and Cabbage Salad 126 XII. Robin Writes a Letter 138 XIII. Susy Castle 151 XIV. A Gift to the Queen 164 XV. The Party 176 XVI. Christmas at the Manor 190 XVII. The House of Laughter 204 XVIII. The Luckless Stocking 220 XIX. Granny 235 XX. Robin's Beginning 250 XXI. At the Granger Mills 266 XXII. The Green Beads 279 XXIII. Robin's Rescue 292 XXIV. Madame Forsyth Comes Home 305 Epilogue--A Story After the Story 318
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ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE
The Effect Was Very Christmasy Frontispiece The Beautiful Little Girl Had Not Spoken To Her 20 "Couldn't I Run Away With You?" 56 "It's Like The House of Bread And Cake" 119
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RED-ROBIN
PROLOGUE
A STORY BEFORE THE STORY
On a green hillside a girl lay prone in the sweet grass, very still that she might not, by the slightest quiver, disturb the beauty that was about her. There was so very, very much beauty--the sky, azure blue overhead and paling where it touched the green-fringed earth; the whispering tree under which she lay, the lush meadow grass, moving like waves of a sea, the bird nesting above her, everything--
And Moira O'Donnell, who had never been farther than the boundaries of her county, knew the whole world was beautiful, too.
Behind her, hid in a hollow, stood the small cottage where, at that very moment, her grandmother was preparing the evening meal. And, beyond, in the village was the little old stone church and Father Murphy's square bit of a house with its wide doorstep and its roof of thatch, and Widow Mulligan's and the Denny's and the Finnegan's and all the others.
Moira loved them all and loved the hospitable homes where there was always, in spite of poverty, a bounty of good feeling.
And before her, just beyond that last steep rise, was the sea. She could hear its roar now, like a deep voice drowning the clearer pipe of the winging birds and the shrill of the little grass creatures. Often she went down to its edge, but at this hour she liked best to lie in the grass and dream her dreams to its lifting music.
Her dream always began with: "Oh, Moira O'Donnell, it's all yours! It's all yours!" Which, of course, sounded like boasting, or a miser gloating over his gold, and might have seemed very funny to anyone so stupid as to see only the girl's shabby dress and her bare feet, gleaming like white satin against the green of the grass. But no fine lady in that land felt richer than Moira when she began her dreaming.
Of late, her dreams were taking on new shapes, as though, with her growth, they reached out, too. And today, as she lay very still in the grass, something big, that was within her and yet had no substance, lifted and sung up to the blue arch of the sky and on to the sun and away westward with it, away like a bird in far flight.
Beyond that golden horizon of heaving sea was everything one could possibly want; Moira had heard that when she was a tiny girl. America, the States, they were words that opened fairy doors.
Father Murphy had told her much about that world beyond the sea. He had visited it once; had spent six weeks with his sister who had married and settled on a farm in the state of Ohio. His sister's husband had all sorts of new-fangled machinery for plowing and seeding, and for his reaping! And Father Murphy had told her of the free library that was in the town near his sister's home, where he could sit all day and read to his heart's content.
Father Murphy (he had spent three whole days in New York) had made