Chapter 10 - Page 2

face illuminated
itself with delighted smiles.

"I don't hear very well at the best of times," she said. "And I've got a
bit of a cold. Just worry, Miss, just worry it is--along of this 'ere
war and my grandsons going marching off every few days seems like. Dick,
that's the youngest as was always my pet, he's the last and he'll be off
any minute--and these is his socks."

Robin actually picked up a sock and patted it softly--with a childish
quiver of her chin. It seemed alive.

"Yes, yes!" she said. "Oh! dear! Oh! dear!"

Mrs. Bennett winked tears out of her eyes hastily.

"Me being hard of hearing is no excuse for me talking about myself first
thing. Dick, he's an Englishman--and they're all Englishmen--and it's
Englishmen that's got to stand up and do their duty--same as they did at
Waterloo." She swallowed valiantly the lump in her throat. "Her grace
wrote to me about you, Miss, with her own kind hand. She said the
cottage was so quiet and pretty you wouldn't mind it being little--and
me being a bit deaf."

"I shall mind nothing," said Robin. She raised her voice and tried to
speak very distinctly so as to make sure that the old fairy woman would
hear her. "It is the most beautiful cottage I ever saw in my life. It is
like a cottage in a fairy story."

"That's what the vicar says, Miss, my dear," was Mrs. Bennett's cheerful
reply. "He says it ought to be hid some way because if the cheap
trippers found it out they'd wear the life out of me with pestering me
to give 'em six-penny teas. They'd get none from me!" quite fiercely.
"Her grace give it to me her own self and it's on Mersham land and not a
lawyer on earth could put me out."

She became quite active and bustling--picking a spray of honeysuckle and
a few sprigs of mignonette from near the doorway and handing them to
Robin.

"Your room's full of 'em," she said, "them and musk and roses. You'll
sleep and wake in the midst of flowers and birds singing and bees
humming. And I can give you rich milk and home-baked bread, God bless
you! You _are_ welcome. Come in, my pretty dear--Miss."

The girl came down from London to the cottage on the wood's edge several
times during the weeks that followed. It was easy to reach and too
beautiful and lone and strange to stay away from. The War ceased where
the wood began. Mrs. Bennett delighted in her and, regarding the Duchess
as a sort of adored deity, would have served her lodger on bended knee
if custom had permitted. Robin could always make her hear, and she sat
and listened so tenderly to her stories of her grandsons that there grew
up