The slice of a house from that time forward presented the external
aspect to which the inhabitants of the narrow and fashionable
street and those who passed through it had been accustomed. Such
individuals as had anticipated beholding at some early day notices
conspicuously placed announcing "Sale by Auction. Elegant Modern
Furniture" were vaguely puzzled as well as surprised by the fact
that no such notices appeared even inconspicuously. Also there
did not draw up before the door--even as the weeks went on--huge
and heavy removal vans with their resultant litter, their final
note of farewell a "To Let" in the front windows.

On the contrary, the florist came and refilled the window boxes
with an admirable arrangement of fresh flowers; new and even more
correct servants were to be seen ascending and descending the area
step; a young footman quite as smart as the departed Edward opened
the front door and attended Mrs. Gareth-Lawless to her perfect
little brougham. The trades-people appeared promptly every day and
were obsequiously respectful in manner. Evidently the household
had not disintegrated as a result of the death of Mr. Gareth-Lawless.

As it became an established fact that the household had not fallen to
pieces its frequenters gradually returned to it, wearing indeed
the air of people who had never really remained away from it. There
had been natural reasons enough for considerate absence from a
house of bereavement and a desolate widow upon whose grief it would
have been indelicate to intrude. As Feather herself had realized,
the circle of her intimates was not formed of those who could
readily adjust themselves to entirely changed circumstances. If
you dance on a tight rope and the rope is unexpectedly withdrawn,
where are you? You cannot continue dancing until the rope is
restrung.

The rope, however, being apparently made absolutely secure, it
was not long before the dancing began again. Feather's mourning,
wonderfully shading itself from month to month, was the joy of all
beholders. Madame Helene treated her as a star gleaming through
gradually dispersing clouds. Her circle watched her with secretly
humorous interest as each fine veil of dimness was withdrawn.

"The things she wears are priceless," was said amiably in her own
drawing-room. "Where does she get them? Figure to yourself Lawdor
paying the bills."

"She gets them from Helene," said a long thin young man with
a rather good-looking narrow face and dark eyes, peering through
pince nez, "But I couldn't."

In places where entertainment as a means of existence proceed so
to speak, fast and furiously, questions of taste are not dwelt
upon at leisure. You need not hesitate before saying anything you
liked in any one's drawing-room so long as it was amusing enough
to make somebody--if not everybody--laugh. Feather had made people
laugh in the same fashion in the past. The persons she most admired
were always making sly little impudent comments and suggestions,
and the thwarted years on the island of Jersey had, in her case,
resulted in an almost hectic desire to keep pace. Her efforts had
usually been successes because Nature's self had provided her with
the manner of a silly pretty child who did not know how far she
went. Shouts of laughter had often greeted her, and the first time
she had for a moment doubted her prowess was on an occasion when
she had caught a glimpse of Coombe who stared at her with an
expression which she would--just for one second--have felt might
be horror, if she had not been so sure it couldn't be, and must of
course be something else--one of the things nobody ever understood
in him.

By the time the softly swathing veils of vaporous darkness were
withdrawn, and the tight rope assuring everyone of its permanent
security became a trusted support, Feather at her crowded little
parties and at other people's bigger ones did not remain wholly
unaware of the probability that even people who rather liked
her made, among themselves, more or less witty comments upon her
improved fortunes. They were improved greatly. Bills were paid,
trades-people were polite, servants were respectful; she had no
need to invent excuses and lies. She and Robert had always kept out
of the way of stodgy, critical people, so they had been intimate
with none of the punctilious who might have withdrawn themselves
from a condition of things they chose to disapprove: accordingly,
she found no gaps in her circle. Those who had formed the habit of
amusing themselves at her house were as ready as before to amuse
themselves again.

The fact remained, however,--curiously, perhaps, in connection with
the usual slightness of all impressions made on her--that there
was a memory which never wholly left her. Even when she tried to
force it so far into the background of her existence that it might
almost be counted as forgotten, it had a trick of rising before
her. It was the memory of the empty house as its emptiness had
struck to the centre of her being when she had turned from her
bedroom window after watching the servants drive away in their
cabs. It was also the memory of the hours which had followed--the
night in which nobody had been in any of the rooms--no one had gone
up or down the stairs--when all had seemed dark and hollow--except
the Night Nursery where Robin screamed, and her own room where she
herself cowered under the bed clothes and pulled the pillow over
her head. But though the picture would not let itself be blotted
out, its effect was rather to intensify her sense of relief because
she had slipped so safely from under the wheels of destiny.

"Sometimes," she revealed artlessly to Coombe, "while I am driving
in the park on a fine afternoon when every one is out and the
dresses look like the flower beds, I let myself remember it just
to make myself enjoy everything more by contrast."

The elderly woman who had been a nurse in her youth and who had
been sent by Lord Coombe temporarily to replace Louisa had not
remained long in charge of Robin. She was not young and smart
enough for a house on the right side of the right street, and
Feather found a young person who looked exactly as she should when
she pushed the child's carriage before her around the square.

The square--out of which the right street branches--and the "Gardens"
in the middle of the square to which only privileged persons were
admitted by private key, the basement kitchen and Servants' Hall,
and the two top floor nurseries represented the world to the
child Robin for some years. When she was old enough to walk in the
street she was led by the hand over the ground she had travelled
daily in her baby carriage. Her first memory of things was a memory
of standing on the gravel path in the Square Gardens and watching
some sparrows quarrel while Andrews, her nurse, sat on a bench
with another nurse and talked in low tones. They were talking in
a way Robin always connected with servants and which she naturally
accepted as being the method of expression of their species--much
as she accepted the mewing of cats and the barking of dogs. As
she grew older, she reached the stage of knowing that they were
generally saying things they did not wish her to hear.

She liked watching the sparrows in the Gardens because she liked
watching sparrows at all times. They were the only friends she had
ever known, though she was not old enough to call them friends,
or to know what friends meant. Andrews had taught her, by means
of a system of her own, to know better than to cry or to make any
protesting noise when she was left alone in her ugly small nursery.
Andrews' idea of her duties did not involve boring herself to death
by sitting in a room on the top floor when livelier entertainment
awaited her in the basement where the cook was a woman of wide
experience, the housemaid a young person who had lived in gay
country houses, and the footman at once a young man of spirit
and humour. So Robin spent many hours of the day--taking them
altogether--quite by herself. She might have more potently resented
her isolations if she had ever known any other condition than
that of a child in whom no one was in the least interested and
in whom "being good" could only mean being passive under neglect
and calling no one's attention to the fact that she wanted anything
from anybody. As a bird born in captivity lives in its cage and
perhaps believes it to be the world, Robin lived in her nursery
and knew every square inch of it with a deadly if unconscious
sense of distaste and fatigue. She was put to bed and taken up,
she was fed and dressed in it, and once a day--twice perhaps if
Andrews chose--she was taken out of it downstairs and into the
street. That was all. And that was why she liked the sparrows so
much.

And sparrows are worth watching if you live in a nursery where
nothing ever happens and where, when you look out, you are so high
up that it is not easy to see the people in the world below, in
addition to which it seems nearly always raining. Robin used to
watch them hopping about on the slate roofs of the homes on the
other side of the street. They fluttered their wings, they picked
up straws and carried them away. She thought they must have houses
of their own among the chimneys--in places she could not see. She
fancied it would be nice to hop about on the top of a roof oneself
if one were not at all afraid of falling. She liked the chippering
and chirping sounds the birds made became it sounded like talking
and laughing--like the talking and laughing she sometimes wakened
out of her sleep to lie and listen to when the Lady Downstairs had
a party. She often wondered what the people were doing because it
sounded as if they liked doing it very much.

Sometimes when it had rained two or three days she had a feeling
which made her begin to cry to herself--but not aloud. She had
once had a little black and blue mark on her arm for a week where
Andrews had pinched her because she had cried loud enough to be
heard. It had seemed to her that Andrews twisted and pinched the
bit of flesh for five minutes without letting it go and she had
held her large hand over her mouth as she did it.

"Now you keep that in your mind," she had said when she had finished
and Robin had almost choked in her awful little struggle to keep
back all sound.

The one thing Andrews was surest of was that nobody would come
upstairs to the Nursery to inquire the meaning of any cries which
were not unearthly enough to disturb the household. So it was easy
to regulate the existence of her charge in such a manner as best
suited herself.

"Just give her food enough and keep her from making silly noises
when she wants what she doesn't get," said Andrews to her companions
below stairs. "That one in the drawing-room isn't going to interfere
with the Nursery. Not her! I know my business and I know how to
manage her kind. I go to her politely now and then and ask her
permission to buy things from Best's or Liberty's or some other
good place. She always stares a minute when I begin, as if she
scarcely understood what I was talking about and then she says
'Oh, yes, I suppose she must have them.' And I go and get them. I
keep her as well dressed as any child in Mayfair. And she's been
a beauty since she was a year old so she looks first rate when I
wheel her up and down the street, so the people can see she's well
taken care of and not kept hidden away. No one can complain of her
looks and nobody is bothered with her. That's all that's wanted
of ME. I get good wages and I get them regular. I don't turn up
my nose at a place like this, whatever the outside talk is. Who
cares in these days anyway? Fashionable people's broader minded
than they used to be. In Queen Victoria's young days they tell
me servants were no class that didn't live in families where they
kept the commandments."

"Fat lot the commandments give any one trouble in these times,"
said Jennings, the footman, who was a wit. "There's one of 'em I
could mention that's been broken till there's no bits of it left
to keep. If I smashed that plate until it was powder it'd have
to be swept into the dust din. That's what happened to one or two
commandments in particular."

"Well," remarked Mrs. Blayne, the cook, "she don't interfere and
he pays the bills prompt. That'll do ME instead of commandments.
If you'll believe me, my mother told me that in them Queen Victoria
days ladies used to inquire about cold meat and ask what was done
with the dripping. Civilisation's gone beyond that--commandments
or no commandments."

"He's precious particular about bills being paid," volunteered
Jennings, with the air of a man of the world. "I heard him having
a row with her one day about some bills she hadn't paid. She'd
spent the money for some nonsense and he was pretty stiff in that
queer way of his. Quite right he was too. I'd have been the same
myself," pulling up his collar and stretching his neck in a manner
indicating exact knowledge of the natural sentiments of a Marquis
when justly annoyed. "What he intimated was that if them bills
was not paid with the money that was meant to pay them, the
money wouldn't be forthcoming the next time." Jennings was rather
pleased by the word "forthcoming" and therefore he repeated it
with emphasis, "It wouldn't be FORTHCOMING."

"That'd frighten her," was Andrews' succinct observation.

"It did!" said Jennings. "She'd have gone in hysterics if he hadn't
kept her down. He's got a way with him, Coombe has."

Andrews laughed, a brief, dry laugh.

"Do you know what the child calls her?" she said. "She calls her
the Lady Downstairs. She's got a sort of fancy for her and tries
to get peeps at her when we go out. I notice she always cranes
her little neck if we pass a room she might chance to be in. It's
her pretty clothes and her laughing that does it. Children's drawn
by bright colours and noise that sounds merry."

"It's my belief the child doesn't know she IS her mother!" said
Mrs. Blayne as she opened an oven door to look at some rolls.

"It's my belief that if I told her she was she wouldn't know what
the word meant. It was me she got the name from," Andrews still
laughed as she explained. "I used to tell her about the Lady
Downstairs would hear if she made a noise, or I'd say I'd let her
have a peep at the Lady Downstairs if she was very good. I saw
she had a kind of awe of her though she liked her so much, so it
was a good way of managing her. You mayn't believe me but for
a good bit I didn't take in that she didn't know there was such
things as mothers and, when I did take it in, I saw there wasn't
any use in trying to explain. She wouldn't have understood."

"How would you go about to explain a mother, anyway?" suggested
Jennings. "I'd have to say that she was the person that had the
right to slap your head if you didn't do what she told you."

"I'd have to say that she was the woman that could keep you slaving
at kitchen maid's work fifteen hours a day," said Mrs. Blayne;
"My mother was cook in a big house and trained me under her."

"I never had one," said Andrews stiffly. The truth was that she
had taken care of eight infant brothers and sisters, while her
maternal parent slept raucously under the influence of beer when
she was not quarrelling with her offspring.

Jane, the housemaid, had passed a not uncomfortable childhood in
the country and was perhaps of a soft nature.

"I'd say that a mother's the one that you belong to and that's
fond of you, even if she does keep you straight," she put in.

"Her mother isn't fond of her and doesn't keep herself straight,"
said Jennings. "So that wouldn't do."

"And she doesn't slap her head or teach her to do kitchen maid's
work," put in Mrs. Blayne, "so yours is no use, Mr. Jennings, and
neither is mine. Miss Andrews 'll have to cook up an explanation
of her own herself when she finds she has to."

"She can get it out of a Drury Lane melodrama," said Jennings, with
great humour. "You'll have to sit down some night, Miss Andrews,
and say, 'The time has come, me chee-ild, when I must tell you
All'."

In this manner were Mrs. Gareth-Lawless and her maternal affections
discussed below stairs. The interesting fact remained that to Robin
the Lady Downstairs was merely a radiant and beautiful being who
floated through certain rooms laughing or chattering like a bird,
and always wearing pretty clothes, which were different each time
one beheld her. Sometimes one might catch a glimpse of her through
a door, or, if one pressed one's face against the window pane at
the right moment, she might get into her bright little carnage in
the street below and, after Jennings had shut its door, she might
be seen to give a lovely flutter to her clothes as she settled
back against the richly dark blue cushions.

It is a somewhat portentous thing to realize that a newborn
human creature can only know what it is taught. The teaching may
be conscious or unconscious, intelligent or idiotic, exquisite
or brutal. The images presented by those surrounding it, as its
perceptions awaken day by day, are those which record themselves
on its soul, its brain, its physical being which is its sole means
of expressing, during physical life, all it has learned. That
which automatically becomes the Law at the dawning of newborn
consciousness remains, to its understanding, the Law of Being,
the Law of the Universe. To the cautious of responsibility this
at times wears the aspect of an awesome thing, suggesting, however
remotely, that it might seem well, perhaps, to remove the shoes
from one's feet, as it were, and tread with deliberate and delicate
considering of one's steps, as do the reverently courteous even
on the approaching of an unknown altar.

This being acknowledged a scientific, as well as a spiritual truth,
there remains no mystery in the fact that Robin at six years
old--when she watched the sparrows in the Square Gardens--did not
know the name of the feeling which had grown within her as a result
of her pleasure in the chance glimpses of the Lady Downstairs. It
was a feeling which made her eager to see her or anything which
belonged to her; it made her strain her child ears to catch the
sound of her voice; it made her long to hear Andrews or the other
servants speak of her, and yet much too shy to dare to ask any
questions. She had found a place on the staircase leading to the
Nursery, where, by squeezing against the balustrade, she could
sometimes see the Lady pass in and out of her pink bedroom. She
used to sit on a step and peer between the railing with beating
heart. Sometimes, after she had been put to bed for the night and
Andrews was safely entertained downstairs, Robin would be awakened
from her first sleep by sounds in the room below and would creep
out of bed and down to her special step and, crouching in a hectic
joy, would see the Lady come out with sparkling things in her hair
and round her lovely, very bare white neck and arms, all swathed
in tints and draperies which made her seem a vision of colour and
light. She was so radiant a thing that often the child drew in
her breath with a sound like a little sob of ecstasy, and her lip
trembled as if she were going to cry. But she did not know that what
she felt was the yearning of a thing called love--a quite simple
and natural common thing of which she had no reason for having
any personal knowledge. As she was unaware of mothers, so she was
unaware of affection, of which Andrews would have felt it to be
superfluously sentimental to talk to her.

On the very rare occasions when the Lady Downstairs appeared on
the threshold of the Day Nursery, Robin--always having been freshly
dressed in one of her nicest frocks--stood and stared with immense
startled eyes and answered in a whisper the banal little questions
put to her. The Lady appeared at such rare intervals and remained
poised upon the threshold like a tropic plumaged bird for moments
so brief, that there never was time to do more than lose breath and
gaze as at a sudden vision. Why she came--when she did come--Robin
did not understand. She evidently did not belong to the small,
dingy nurseries which grew shabbier every year as they grew steadily
more grimy under the persistent London soot and fogs.

Feather always held up her draperies when she came. She would not
have come at all but for the fact that she had once or twice been
asked if the child was growing pretty, and it would have seemed
absurd to admit that she never saw her at all.

"I think she's rather pretty," she said downstairs. "She's round
and she has a bright colour--almost too bright, and her eyes are
round too. She's either rather stupid or she's shy--and one's as
bad as the other. She's a child that stares."

If, when Andrews had taken her into the Gardens, she had played
with other children, Robin would no doubt have learned something
of the existence and normal attitude of mothers through the
mere accident of childish chatter, but it somehow happened that
she never formed relations with the charges of other nurses. She
took it for granted for some time that this was because Andrews
had laid down some mysterious law. Andrews did not seem to form
acquaintances herself. Sometimes she sat on a bench and talked
a little to another nurse, but she seldom sat twice with the same
person. It was indeed generally her custom to sit alone, crocheting
or sewing, with a rather lofty and exclusive air and to call Robin
back to her side if she saw her slowly edging towards some other
child.

"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. Some
wouldn't, of course, but I'm not going to run risks. I'm going to
save my own pride."

But one morning when Robin was watching her sparrows, a nurse,
who was an old acquaintance, surprised Andrews by appearing in the
Gardens with two little girls in her charge. They were children
of nine and eleven and quite sufficient for themselves, apart from
the fact that they regarded Robin as a baby and, therefore, took
no notice of her. They began playing with skipping ropes, which
left their nurse free to engage in delighted conversation with
Andrews.

It was conversation so delightful that Robin was forgotten, even
to the extent of being allowed to follow her sparrows round a
clump of shrubbery and, therefore, out of Andrews' sight, though
she was only a few yards away. The sparrows this morning were
quarrelsome and suddenly engaged in a fight, pecking each other
furiously, beating their wings and uttering shrill, protesting
chipperings. Robin did not quite understand what they were doing
and stood watching them with spellbound interest.

It was while she watched them that she heard footsteps on the
gravel walk which stopped near her and made her look up to see who
was at her side. A big boy in Highland kilts and bonnet and sporan
was standing by her, and she found herself staring into a pair of
handsome deep blue eyes, blue like the waters of a hillside tarn.
They were wide, glowing, friendly eyes and none like them had ever
looked into hers before. He seemed to her to be a very big boy
indeed, and in fact, he was unusually tall and broad for his age,
but he was only eight years old and a simple enough child pagan.
Robin's heart began to beat as it did when she watched the Lady
Downstairs, but there was something different in the beating. It
was something which made her red mouth spread and curve itself into
a smile which showed all her small teeth.

So they stood and stared at each other and for some strange, strange
reason--created, perhaps, with the creating of Man and still hidden
among the deep secrets of the Universe--they were drawn to each
other--wanted each other--knew each other. Their advances were, of
course, of the most primitive--as primitive and as much a matter
of instinct as the nosing and sniffing of young animals. He spread
and curved his red mouth and showed the healthy whiteness of his
own handsome teeth as she had shown her smaller ones. Then he began
to run and prance round in a circle, capering like a Shetland pony
to exhibit at once his friendliness and his prowess. He tossed his
curled head and laughed to make her laugh also, and she not only
laughed but clapped her hands. He was more beautiful than anything
she had ever seen before in her life, and he was plainly trying
to please her. No child creature had ever done anything like it
before, because no child creature had ever been allowed by Andrews
to make friends with her. He, on his part, was only doing what
any other little boy animal would have done--expressing his child
masculinity by "showing off" before a little female. But to this
little female it had never happened before.

It was all beautifully elemental. As does not too often happen,
two souls as well as two bodies were drawn towards each other by
the Magnet of Being. When he had exhibited himself for a minute
or two he came back to her, breathing fast and glowing.

"My pony in Scotland does that. His name is Chieftain. He is a
Shetland pony and he is only that high," he measured forty inches
from the ground. "I'm called Donal. What are you called?"

"Robin," she answered, her lips and voice trembling with joy. He
was so beautiful. His hair was bright and curly. His broad forehead
was clear white where he had pushed back his bonnet with the eagle
feather standing upright on it. His strong legs and knees were
white between his tartan kilt and his rolled back stockings. The
clasps which held his feather and the plaid over his shoulder were
set with fine stones in rich silver. She did not know that he was
perfectly equipped as a little Highland chieftain, the head of
his clan, should be.

They began to play together, and the unknown Fates, which do their
work as they choose, so wrought on this occasion as to cause
Andrews' friend to set forth upon a journey through a story so
exciting in its nature that its hearer was held spellbound and
oblivious to her surroundings themselves. Once, it is true, she
rose as in a dream and walked round the group of shrubs, but the
Fates had arranged for that moment also. Robin was alone and was
busily playing with some leaves she had plucked and laid on the
seat of a bench for some mysterious reason. She looked good for
an hour's safe occupation, and Andrews returned to her friend's
detailed and intimate version of a great country house scandal,
of which the papers were full because it had ended in the divorce
court.

Donal had, at that special moment, gone to pick some of the biggest
leaves from the lilac bush of which the Gardens contained numerous
sooty specimens. The leaves Robin was playing with were some he
had plucked first to show her a wonderful thing. If you laid a leaf
flat on the seat of the bench and were fortunate enough to possess
a large pin you could prick beautiful patterns on the leaf's
greenness--dots and circles, and borders and tiny triangles of a
most decorative order. Neither Donal nor Robin had a pin but Donal
had, in his rolled down stocking, a little dirk the point of which
could apparently be used for any interesting purpose. It was really
he who did the decoration, but Robin leaned against the bench and
looked on enthralled. She had never been happy before in the entire
course of her brief existence. She had not known or expected and
conditions other than those she was familiar with--the conditions
of being fed and clothed, kept clean and exercised, but totally
unloved and unentertained. She did not even know that this nearness
to another human creature, the exchange of companionable looks,
which were like flashes of sunlight, the mutual outbreaks of child
laughter and pleasure were happiness. To her, what she felt, the
glow and delight of it, had no name but she wanted it to go on
and on, never to be put an end to by Andrews or anyone else.

The boy Donal was not so unconscious. He had been happy all his
life. What he felt was that he had liked this little girl the
minute he saw her. She was pretty, though he thought her immensely
younger than himself, and, when she had looked up at him with her
round, asking eyes, he had wanted to talk to her and make friends.
He had not played much with boys and he had no haughty objection
to girls who liked him. This one did, he saw at once.

Through what means children so quickly convey to each other--while
seeming scarcely to do more than play--the entire history of their
lives and surroundings, is a sort of occult secret. It is not a
matter of prolonged conversation. Perhaps images created by the
briefest of unadorned statements produce on the unwritten tablets
of the child mind immediate and complete impressions. Safe as
the locked garden was, Andrews cannot have forgotten her charge
for any very great length of time and yet before Donal, hearing
his attendant's voice from her corner, left Robin to join her and
be taken home, the two children knew each other intimately. Robin
knew that Donal's home was in Scotland--where there are hills and
moors with stags on them. He lived there with "Mother" and he had
been brought to London for a visit. The person he called "Mother"
was a woman who took care of him and he spoke of her quite often.
Robin did not think she was like Andrews, though she did not in
the least know why. On his part Donal knew about the nurseries
and the sparrows who hopped about on the slates of the houses
opposite. Robin did not describe the nurseries to him, but Donal
knew that they were ugly and that there were no toys in them and
nothing to do. Also, in some mystic fashion, he realized that
Andrews would not let Robin play with him if she saw them together,
and that, therefore, they must make the most of their time. Full
of their joy in each other, they actually embarked upon an ingenious
infant intrigue, which involved their trying to meet behind the
shrubs if they were brought to the Gardens the next day. Donal was
sure he could come because his nurse always did what he asked of
her. He was so big now that she was not a real nurse, but she had
been his nurse when he was quite little and "Mother" liked her
to travel with them. He had a tutor but he had stayed behind in
Scotland at Braemarnie, which was their house. Donal would come
tomorrow and he would look for Robin and when she saw him she must
get away from Andrews and they would play together again.

"I will bring one of my picture books," he said grandly. "Can you
read at all?"

"No," answered Robin adoring him. "What are picture books?"

"Haven't you any?" he blurted out.

"No," said Robin. She looked at the gravel walk, reflecting a
moment thoughtfully on the Day Nursery and the Night Nursery. Then
she lifted her eyes to the glowing blueness of his and said quite
simply, "I haven't anything."

He suddenly remembered things his Mother had told him about poor
people. Perhaps she was poor. Could she be poor when her frock
and hat and coat were so pretty? It was not polite to ask. But the
thought made him love her more. He felt something warm rush all
over his body. The truth, if he had been old enough to be aware of
it, was that the entire simpleness of her acceptance of things as
they were, and a something which was unconsciousness of any cause
for complaint, moved his child masculinity enormously. His old
nurse's voice came from her corner again.

"I must go to Nanny," he said, feeling somehow as if he had been
running fast. "I'll come tomorrow and bring two picture books."

He was a loving, warm blooded child human thing, and the expression
of affection was, to him, a familiar natural impulse. He put his
strong little eight-year-old arms round her and kissed her full
on her mouth, as he embraced her with all his strength. He kissed
her twice.

It was the first time for Robin. Andrews did not kiss. There was
no one else. It was the first time, and Nature had also made her
a loving, warm blooded, human thing. How beautiful he was--how
big--how strong his arms were--and how soft and warm his mouth
felt. She stood and gazed at him with wide asking eyes and laughed a
little. She had no words because she did not know what had happened.

"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. As
ingenuously and heartily as before, he kissed her again 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.