Robin | Page 3

nurse--as behooved one
employed in a house about which there "was talk" bore herself with a
lofty and exclusive air.
"My rule is to keep myself to myself," she said in the kitchen, "and to
look as if I was the one that would turn up noses, if noses was to be
turned up. There's those that would snatch away their children if I let
Robin begin to make up to them."
But one morning, when Robin was watching some quarrelsome
sparrows, an old acquaintance surprised Andrews by appearing in the
Gardens and engaged her in a conversation so delightful that Robin was
forgotten to the extent of being allowed to follow her sparrows round a
clump of shrubbery out of sight.
It was while she watched them that she heard footsteps that stopped
near her. She looked up. A big boy in Highland kilts and bonnet and
sporan was standing by her. He spread and curved his red mouth, then
began to run and prance round in a circle, capering like a Shetland pony
to exhibit at once his friendliness and his prowess. After a minute or
two he stopped, breathing fast and glowing.
"My pony in Scotland does that. His name is Chieftain. I'm called
Donal. What are you called?"
"Robin," she answered, her lips and voice trembling with joy. He was
so beautiful.
They began to play together while Andrews' friend recounted intimate
details of a country house scandal.

Donal picked leaves from a lilac bush. Robin learned that if you laid a
leaf flat on the seat of a bench you could prick beautiful patterns on the
leaf's greenness. Donal had--in his rolled down stocking--a little dirk.
He did the decoration with the point of this while Robin looked on,
enthralled.
Through what means children so quickly convey to each other the
entire history of their lives is a sort of occult secret. Before Donal was
taken home, Robin knew that he lived in Scotland and had been
brought to London on a visit, that his other name was Muir, that the
person he called "mother" was a woman who took care of him. He
spoke of her quite often.
"I will bring one of my picture-books to-morrow," he said grandly.
"Can you read at all?"
"No," answered Robin, adoring him. "What are picture books?"
"Haven't you any?" he blurted out.
She lifted her eyes to the glowing blueness of his and said quite simply,
"I haven't anything."
His old nurse's voice came from the corner where she sat.
"I must go back to Nanny," he said, feeling, somehow, as if he had
been running fast. "I'll come to-morrow and bring two picture books."
He put his strong little eight-year-old arms round her and kissed her full
on the mouth. It was the first time, for Robin. Andrews did not kiss.
There was no one else.
"Don't you like to be kissed?" said Donal, uncertain because she looked
so startled and had not kissed him back.
"Kissed," she repeated, with a small caught breath. "Ye--es." She knew
now what it was. It was being kissed. She drew nearer at once and
lifted up her face as sweetly and gladly as a flower lifts itself to the sun.

"Kiss me again," she said, quite eagerly. And this time, she kissed too.
When he ran quickly away, she stood looking after him with smiling,
trembling lips, uplifted, joyful--wondering and amazed.
The next morning Andrews had a cold and her younger sister Anne was
called in to perform her duties. The doctor pronounced the cold serious,
and Andrews was confined to her bed. Hours spent under the trees
reading were entirely satisfactory to Anne. And so, for two weeks, the
soot-sprinkled London square was as the Garden of Eden to Donal and
Robin.
In her fine, aloof way, Helen Muir had learned much in her stays in
London and during her married life--in the exploring of foreign cities
with her husband. She was not proud of the fact that in the event of the
death of Lord Coombe's shattered and dissipated nephew her son would
become heir presumptive to Coombe Court. She had not asked
questions about Coombe. It had not been necessary. Once or twice she
had seen Feather by chance. She was to see her again--by Feather's
intention.
With Donal prancing at her side, Mrs. Muir went to the Gardens to
meet the child Nanny had described as "a bit of witch fire
dancing--with her colour and her big silk curls in a heap, and Donal
staring at her like a young man at a beauty."
Robin was waiting behind the lilac bushes and her nurse was already
deep in the mystery of "Lady Audley."
"There she is!" cried Donal, as he ran to her. "My mother has come