Robin | Page 4

with me. This is Robin, mother! This is Robin."
Her exquisiteness and physical brilliancy gave Mrs. Muir something
not unlike a slight shock. Oh! No wonder, since she was like that. She
stooped and kissed the round cheek delicately. She took the little hand
and they walked round the garden, then sat on a bench and watched the
children "make up" things to play.
A victoria was driving past. Suddenly a sweetly hued figure spoke to

the coachman. "Stop here," she said. "I want to get out."
Robin's eyes grew very round and large and filled with a worshipping
light.
"It is," she gasped, "the Lady Downstairs!"
Feather floated near to the seat and paused, smiling. "Where is your
nurse, Robin?" she asked.
"She is only a few yards away," said Mrs. Muir.
"So kind of you to let Robin play with your boy. Don't let her bore you.
I am Mrs. Gareth-Lawless."
There was a little silence, a delicate little silence.
"I recognized you as Mrs. Muir at once," added Feather, unperturbed
and smiling brilliantly. "I saw your portrait at the Grovenor."
"Yes," said Mrs. Muir, gently.
"I wanted very much to see your son; that was why I came."
"Yes," still gently from Mrs. Muir.
"Because of Coombe, you know. We are such old friends. How queer
that the two little things have made friends too. I didn't know."
She bade them good-bye and strayed airily away.
And that night Donal was awakened, was told that "something" had
happened, that they were to go back to Scotland. He was accustomed to
do as he was told. He got out of bed and began to dress, but he
swallowed very hard.
"I shall not see Robin," he said in a queer voice. "She won't find me
when she goes behind the lilac bushes. She won't know why I don't
come." Then, in a way that was strangely grown up: "She has no one

but me to remember."
* * * * *
The next morning a small, rose-coloured figure stood still for so long in
the gardens that it began to look rigid and some one said, "I wonder
what that little girl is waiting for."
A child has no words out of which to build hopes and fears. Robin
could only wait in the midst of a slow dark rising tide of something she
had no name for. Suddenly she knew. He was gone! She crept under the
shrubbery. She cried, she sobbed. If Andrews had seen her she would
have said she was "in a tantrum." But she was not. Her world had been
torn away.
* * * * *
Five weeks later Feather was giving a very little dinner in the slice of a
house. There was Harrowby, a good looking young man with dark eyes,
and the Starling who was "emancipated" and whose real name was
Miss March. The third diner was a young actor with a low, veiled
voice--Gerald Vesey--who adored and understood Feather's clothes.
Over coffee in the drawing-room Coombe joined them just at the
moment that Feather was "going to tell them something to make them
laugh."
"Robin is in love!" she cried. "She is five years old and she has been
deserted and Andrews came to tell me she can neither eat nor sleep.
The doctor says she has had a shock."
Coombe did not join in the ripple of laughter, but he looked interested.
"Robin is a stimulating name," said Harrowby. "Is it too late to let us
see her?"
"They usually go to sleep at seven, I believe," remarked Coombe, "but
of course I am not an authority."

Robin was not asleep, though she had long been in bed with her eyes
closed. She had heard Andrews say to her sister Anne:
"Lord Coombe's the reason. She does not want her boy to see or speak
to him, so she whisked him back to Scotland."
"Is Lord Coombe as bad as they say?" put in Anne, with bated breath.
"As to his badness," Robin heard Andrews answer, "there's some that
can't say enough against him. It's what he is in this house that does it.
She won't have her boy playing with a child like Robin."
Then--even as there flashed upon Robin the revelation of her own
unfitness--came a knock at the door.
She was taken up, dressed in her prettiest frock and led down the
narrow stairway. She heard the Lady say:
"Shake hands with Lord Coombe."
Robin put her hand behind her back--she who had never disobeyed
since she was born!
"Be pretty mannered, Miss Robin my dear," Andrews instructed, "and
shake hands with his Lordship."
Each person in the little drawing-room saw the queer flame in the
child-face. She shrilled out her words:
"Andrews will pinch me--Andrews will