Chapter 14

When, from Robin's embarrassed young consciousness, there had
welled up the hesitating confession, "She--doesn't like me," she
could not, of course, have found words in which to make the reasons
for her knowledge clear, but they had for herself no obscurity.
The fair being who, at rare intervals, fluttered on the threshold
of her world had a way of looking at her with a shade of aloof
distaste in her always transient gaze.

The unadorned fact was that Feather did NOT like her. She had been
outraged by her advent. A baby was absurdly "out of the picture."
So far as her mind encompassed a future, she saw herself flitting
from flower to flower of "smart" pleasures and successes,
somehow, with more money and more exalted invitations--"something"
vaguely--having happened to the entire Lawdor progeny, and she,
therefore, occupying a position in which it was herself who could
gracefully condescend to others. There was nothing so "stodgy"
as children in the vision. When the worst came to the worst, she
had been consoled by the thought that she had really managed the
whole thing very cleverly. It was easier, of course, to so arrange
such things in modern days and in town. The Day Nursery and the
Night Nursery on the third floor, a smart-looking young woman
who knew her business, who even knew what to buy for a child and
where to buy it, without troubling any one simplified the situation.
Andrews had been quite wonderful. Nobody can bother one about
a healthy, handsome child who is seen meticulously cared for and
beautifully dressed, being pushed or led or carried out in the open
air every day.

But there had arrived the special morning when she had seen a
child who so stood out among a dozen children that she had been
startled when she recognized that it was Robin. Andrews had taken
her charge to Hyde Park that day and Feather was driving through
the Row on her way to a Knightsbridge shop. First her glance had
been caught by the hair hanging to the little hips--extraordinary
hair in which Andrews herself had a pride. Then she had seen the
slender, exquisitely modeled legs, and the dancing sway of the
small body. A wonderfully cut, stitched, and fagotted smock and hat
she had, of course, taken in at a flash. When the child suddenly
turned to look at some little girls in a pony cart, the amazing
damask of her colour, and form and depth of eye had given her another
slight shock. She realized that what she had thrust lightly away
in a corner of her third floor produced an unmistakable effect when
turned out into the light of a gay world. The creature was tall
too--for six years old. Was she really six? It seemed incredible.
Ten more years and she would