"When he come out where we were, I see right off how pale he looked. Almost with his greeting, he turned to Alex with what he had come for, and he put it blunt. "'I was leaving the Cadozas' cottage on the Plank Road half an hour ago,' he said. 'A little way along I saw a man, who had been walking ahead of me, stagger and sprawl in the mud. He wasn't conscious when I got to him. He was little--I picked him up quite easily and got him back into the Cadozas' cottage. He still wasn't conscious when the doctor came. He gave him things. We got him in bed there. And then he spoke. He asked us to hunt up a little boy somewhere in Friendship Village, who belonged to him. And he said the boy's name was Chris.' "It seemed like it was to Alex Proudfit's interested lifting of eyebrows rather than to Robin's exclamation of pity that Insley answered. "'I'm sorry it was necessary to trouble you,' he says, 'but Chris ought to go at once. I'll take him down now.' "'That man,' Robin says, 'the father--is he ill? Is he hurt? How badly is he off?' "'He's very badly off,' says Insley, 'done for, I'm afraid. It was in a street brawl in the City--it's his side, and he's lost a good deal of blood. He walked all the way back here. A few hours, the doctor thought it would be, at most.' "Robin stood up and spoke like what she was saying was a take-for-granted thing. "'Oh,' she says, 'poor, poor little Chris. Alex, I must go down there with him.' "Alex looks over at her, incredulous, and spoke so: 'You?' says he. 'Impossible.' "I was just getting ready to say that of course I'd go with him, if that was anything, when from somewheres that he'd gone with the puppy, Chris spied Insley, and come running to him. "'Oh, you are to the house's party, too!' Chris cried, and threw himself all over him. "Robin knelt down beside the child, and the way she was with him made me think of that first night when she see him at the church, and when her way with him made him turn to her and talk with her and love her ever since. "'Listen, dear,' she said. 'Mr. Insley came here to tell you something. Something about daddy--your daddy. Mr. Insley knows where he is, and he's going to take you to him. But he's very, very sick, dear heart--will you remember that when you see him? Remember Robin told you that?' "There come on his little face a look of being afraid that give it a sudden, terrible grown-up-ness. "'Sick like my mama was?' he asked in a whisper. 'And will he _go out_, like my mama?' "Robin put her arm about him, and he turned to her, clung to her. "'You come, too, Robin,' he said. 'You come, too!' "She got up, meeting Alex's eyes with her straight look. "'I must go, Alex,' she said. 'He wants me--needs me. Why, how could I do anything else?' "Alex smiles down at her, with his way that always seemed to me so much less that of living every minute than of watching it live itself about him.