We then separated, agreeing to meet at a certain part of Bushey Park, between four and half-past. My husband wanted to take a quiet dawdle through the grounds and in the palace. The other six went off together. But somehow they, too, fell apart, before they were out of my sight,—Cherry behind, with Bob and Ted; Maimie in front, with Jack and Cress.
I could not help sighing quietly. It seemed to dawn on me all at once that trouble in that direction might be lying ahead. Robert asked laughingly what the sigh meant.
“Only a mother’s worries,” I said. “I wish Jack and Cress were not both so devoted to Maimie.”
“My dear! Infants, all of them!” Robert said, in an amused voice.
“I don’t know about 'infancy,’” I said. “Jack is very fast becoming a man. And Maimie is as womanly as Cherry.”
“Maimie!” he said, in surprise.
“Yes; you don’t see it, of course, because she has soft clinging ways. But Maimie is grown-up in mind and character. Jack and Cress don’t think of her as a child. To them she is a woman.”
“You are a woman, my dear,” Robert said, smiling. “And women have fertile imaginations.”
“Women see further than men,” I answered. “I hope I am mistaken, Robert,—but I have a horror of brothers being rivals.”
I do not think we said any more then on the subject. It took us a good while to stroll through the gallery, and then we made our way to the beautiful lime avenue in Bushey Park. Robert and I sat down there under a tree, and presently he was dropping asleep. So I quietly got up, and walked about alone. It was just four, and I expected my children to appear before long.