"What are your ambitions, Robin Redbreast?" asked Cousin Peace, using Rob's childish nickname. "I believe I haven't one; isn't it disgraceful?" cried Rob. "Only to be happy, happy, with Mardy and the girls--and you, dearest Cousin Peaceful--in the little grey house, forever and ever without change or decay." "Dear Robin!" murmured her cousin. "If only that might be! But your ambition may be, it _will_ be realized, for love is eternal." "Oh, yes! I believe I am ambitious to resume my story-telling successfully, to help Hessie's little cripples," added Rob with a light pressure of her cheek on Miss Charlotte's hand as her only answer. CHAPTER SEVEN ITS AMBITIONS Prue laid before her mother the proposition from Hester Baldwin which it seemed to the girl herself one that no one could possibly refuse. Mrs. Grey did not entertain it for a moment. "The Baldwins are charming people, dear," she said quietly, as she folded Hester's letter and returned it to its envelope. "If you had no home I should be thankful to have you received into theirs. As it is, and considering that the home to which you would return is such a simple one, I think you would get more harm than good from the school of which Hester speaks. Your place is in the little grey house, my Prudy, and in the little Grey family; it would be too small a family by one if you left us." Prue did not urge the point; there never was the slightest use in urging Mrs. Grey to do something upon which she decidedly made up her mind in the beginning, but the girl's beauty was clouded for some days by the shadow of her dissatisfaction. When Hester came out to spend a few days before Christmas Prue hoped that she might convert her mother to other views, but Hester was so engrossed with her project of founding a home for crippled little children that she had forgotten her plan for Prue. "They tell me that, though he is incurable, the poor little fellow I have sent out to Jersey really is better!" cried Hester almost the moment that she arrived. "Only suppose there were twenty of them!" "Five dollars a week--two hundred and fifty a year, five thousand a year--Oh, Hester, I'm afraid you will have to get on with less than twenty little cripples. You can't afford so many!" cried Rob. "Nonsense, Rob! It wouldn't cost nearly five dollars a week apiece if we had them all in one house, and weren't paying board for them, but had a housekeeper, and made a fund for them all together," retorted Hester. "I'm afraid it would be a sinking fund," remarked Wythie quietly. "It can be done; only give me the chance!" cried Hester. "We will give you a chance!" cried Rob. "I'll announce immediately that I will resume story-telling to the Fayre children. It won't be much, but it will enable you to afford one more cripple, anyway." "I think we might have a costume entertainment; our attic is full of the loveliest things," said Prue.