Red-Robin | Page 6

keep some warm for him, and because the wind whipped chillingly through his thin clothing, he broke into a run.
His homeward way led him past a bit of open triangle which in the neighborhood was dignified by the name of park, a dreary place now, dirty straw stacked about the fountain, dry leaves and papers cluttering the brown earth and whipping against the iron palings of the fence. Dale, still whistling, turned its corner and ran, full-tilt, upon a bit of humanity clinging, like the paper and leaves, to the fence.
"Giminy Gee!" Dale jumped back in alarm. Then: "Did I scare you, kid? Oh, say, what's the matter?" For the face that turned to his was red and swollen with weeping. "Y'lost?" This was Dale's natural conclusion, for the hour was late, and the child a very small one.
"I lost--my Cynthia."
"Your--what?"
"My--my Cynthia. She's my b-bestest doll. I forgot her." The voice trailed off in a wail.
Dale, touched by her woe, looked about him. Certainly no Cynthia was visible. By rapid questioning on his part he drew from her the story of her desertion. She had played a nice game of running 'round and 'round and counting the "things," waiting for Mr. Tony; Cynthia did not like to run because it shook her eyes, so she had put her down on the edge of the straw where the wind would not blow on her. And then Mr. Tony had come and had told her to "hustle along" and she "had runned away and for-g-got Cynthia!"
"Well, I guess she's somebody else's Cynthia now, kid. Things don't stay long in the parks 'round here."
Dale seemed so very old and very wise that the tiny girl listened to his verdict with blanching face. He knew, of course.
"Where d'you live?" demanded Dale. "Why, you're just a baby! Anybody with you?"
The child pointed rather uncertainly to one of the intersecting streets.
"I come that way," she said, then, even while saying it, began to wonder if that were the way she had come. The streets all looked so much alike. She had run along the curb, so as to be as far away as possible from the dark alley ways and the doors. And it had been a long way.
Her lip quivered though she would not cry. After Cynthia's fate, just to be lost herself did not matter.
"Well, don't you know where you live? What's the street? I'll take you home."
"22 Patchin Place," lisped the child.
Dale hesitated a moment to make sure of his bearings. "Well, then, come along. I know where that is. And you forget 'bout your Cynthia. You've got another doll, haven't you? If you haven't, you just ask Santa Claus for one. Why, say, kiddo, what's this? You lame?" For the little girl skipped jerkily at his side.
"That's just the way I'm made," the child answered, quite indifferent to the shocked note in the boy's voice. "I can walk and run, but I go crooked."
"What's your name?"
"Robin Forsyth." She made it sound like "Wobbin Force."
"Oh, Wobbin Force. Funny name, isn't it? And what's your Ma and Pa going to say to you for running off?"
Putting a small hand trustingly into the boy's big one, the child skipped along at his side. "Oh, nothing," she answered, lost in an admiring contemplation of her rescuer. "What's they, anyway?"
"A Ma? Don't you know what your mother is?"
Little Robin met his astonishment with a ripple of laughter. "Oh a mother! I had a lovely, lovely mother once but she's gone away--to Heaven. And is a Pa a Jimmie?"
"A--what?" Dale had never met such a strange child.
"'Cause Jimmie's my Parent. I call him Parent sometimes and sometimes I call him Jimmie."
If his companion had not been so very small Dale might have suspected an attempt at "kidding." He glanced sidewise and suspiciously at her but all he saw was a cherub face framed in a tilted sky-blue tam-o'shanter and straggling ends of flaming red hair.
"Jimmie won't scold me. He'd want me to try to find Cynthia." Robin smothered a sigh. "He wasn't home anyway."
"D'you live all alone? You and your Jimmie?"
"Oh, yes, only Aunt Milly's downstairs and Grandpa Jones is 'cross the hall, so I'm never 'fraid. They're not my really truly aunt's and grandfather's--I just call them that. And Jimmie leaves the light burning anyway. What's your name? And are you very old? Are you a man like Jimmie?"
Dale, warming under the adoration he saw on the small face, felt very big and very manly. He returned the little squeeze that tugged on his hand.
"Oh, I'm a big fellow," he answered.
"You look awful nice," the little girl pursued. "Just like one of my make-believe Princes. I wish you lived with Jimmie and me. I wouldn't mind Cynthia then."
"But the Princes never lived with the little girls in