"Yes—it's only Nature."
The touch of her hand on the pamphlet was a sort of caress—it was a touch which clung.
"Dowie," timidly. "I want to begin to make some little clothes like these. Do you think I can?"
"Well, my dear," answered Dowie composedly—no less so because it was past midnight and the stillness of moor and deserted castle rooms was like a presence in itself. "I taught you to sew very neatly before you were twelve. You liked to do it and you learned to make beautiful small stitches. And Mademoiselle taught you to do fine embroidery. She'd learned it in a convent herself and I never saw finer work anywhere."
"I did like to do it," said Robin. "I never seemed to get tired of sitting in my little chair in the bay window where the flowers grew, and making tiny stitches."
"You had a gift for it. Not all girls have," said Dowie. "Sometimes when you were embroidering a flower you didn't want to leave it to take your walk."
"I am glad I had a gift," Robin took her up. "You see I want to make these little things with my own hands. I don't want them sent up from London. I don't want them bought. Look at this, Dowie."
Dowie went to her side. Her heart was quickening happily as it beat.
Robin touched a design with her finger.