"All right. I don't love you any day; I despise you, and always did," said Frances, with a last squeeze as she withdrew her arms. "Now I must run home to tell mamma you are unanimous. She said if you liked the plan she would see all the parents she could this afternoon, and bid them send their little lambs for you to pipe to them." "Well, Francie, Patergrey does want me, so I suppose I ought to let you go," said Rob. "Tell your blessed mother I can never thank her, but tell her how troubled you found us, and she will understand the good she has done." Rob hardly knew how it happened that at the end of two weeks she found herself established as a Scheherazade, telling stories, not to an Eastern tyrant, but to five-and-twenty lesser tyrants--not less tyrannical--with the east in their bright eyes. Mrs. Silsby had bestirred herself so energetically that Rob's childish audience was not only secured for her at once, but exceeded by five the twenty she had hoped to get. Mr. Grey said children were showered upon her as if she were a foundling asylum. Their ages ranged between eleven and six, the average being eight, and Roberta wondered how she was ever going to interest them, restless as so many butterflies, and inclined to approach suspiciously an entertainment which they suspected of being improving, and very possibly additional lessons under a hypocritical disguise. But they were worth winning, for all of the audience was paid for in advance, and bewildered Rob found a hundred and twenty-five dollars in her hands, which was all her own. Mrs. Silsby managed the financial end of Rob's enterprise, as she had its other details, which was lucky, for Rob would never have dared to offer course-tickets to her stories, with no rebates for absences. But Mrs. Silsby said five dollars was so absurdly little for twenty entertainments that nothing else was to be considered, and Rob yielded, suggesting only that at the top of her little programmes were printed: "Mrs. James Silsby presents Miss Roberta Grey," after the fashion of a great New York manager, and that at the bottom be added: "Treasurer and Press Agent, Mrs. J. H. Silsby." There was some difficulty about Rob's title. Every lad and lassie in her audience--all of whom she had known from their cradles--hailed her "Hallo, Rob," when they met in the highway, but as a Scheherazade the case was different, and her scant dignity of sixteen needed re-enforcing. Mrs. Dinsmore, the lawyer's wife, who was a great stickler for propriety, insisted that her two hopefuls should say "Miss Roberta," and advised Rob to exact this title from the others. But Dorothy Dinsmore herself settled the question by refusing to consider it. "I wouldn't say Miss Roberta for anything, mamma," she declared. "I might say Roberta, but I'd rather say Miss Rob, if I must do anything silly, because you can just slide over that, and say ''S Rob'--and it wouldn't make much difference."