Chapter 27

The night before Robin went away as she sat alone in the dimness
of one light, thinking as girls nearly always sit and think on
the eve of a change, because to youth any change seems to mean
the final closing as well as the opening of ways, the door of
her room was opened and an exquisite and nymphlike figure in pale
green stood exactly where the rays of the reading lamp seemed
to concentrate themselves in an effort to reveal most purely its
delicately startling effect. It was her mother in a dress whose
spring-like tint made her a sort of slim dryad. She looked so pretty
and young that Robin caught her breath as she rose and went forward.

"It is your aged parent come to give you her blessing," said
Feather.

"I was wondering if I might come to your room in the morning,"
Robin answered.

Feather seated herself lightly. She was not intelligent enough to
have any real comprehension of the mood which had impelled her to
come. She had merely given way to a secret sense of resentment of
something which annoyed her. She knew, however, why she had put
on the spring-leaf green dress which made her look like a girl.
She was not going to let Robin feel as if she were receiving a
visit from her grandmother. She had got that far.

"We don't know each other at all, do we?" she said.

"No," answered Robin. She could not remove her eyes from her
loveliness. She brought up such memories of the Lady Downstairs
and the desolate child in the shabby nursery.

"Mothers are not as intimate with their daughters as they used
to be when it was a sort of virtuous fashion to superintend their
rice pudding and lecture them about their lessons. We have not
seen each other often."

"No," said Robin.

Feather's laugh had again the rather high note Coombe had noticed.

"You haven't very much to say, have you?" she commented. "And you
stare at me as if you were trying to explain me. I dare say you
know that you have big eyes and that they're a good colour, but
I may as well hint to you that men do not like to be stared at as
if their deeps were being searched. Drop your eyelids."

Robin's lids dropped in spite of herself because she was startled,
but immediately she was startled again by a note in her mother's
voice--a note of added irritation.

"Don't make a habit of dropping them too often," it broke out, "or
it will look as if you did it to show your eyelashes. Girls with
tricks of that sort are always laughed at. Alison Carr LIVES
sideways became she has a pretty profile."

Coombe would have recognized the little cat look, if he had been
watching her as she leaned back