At this Feather's high, thin little laugh broke forth.
"He turned up there? Donal Muir!" She struck her hands lightly together. "It's too good to be true!"
"Why is it too good to be true?" he inquired without enthusiasm.
"Oh, don't you see? After all his mother's airs and graces and running away with him when they were a pair of babies—as if Robin had the plague. I was the plague—and so were you. And here the old Duchess throws them headlong at each other—in all their full bloom—into each other's arms. I did not do it. You didn't. It was the stuffiest old female grandee in London, who wouldn't let me sweep her front door-steps for her—because I'm an impropriety."
She asked a dozen questions, was quite humorous over the picture she drew of Mrs. Muir's consternation at the peril her one ewe lamb had been led into by her highly revered friend.
"A frightfully good-looking, spoiled boy like that always plunges headlong into any adventure that attracts him. Women have always made love to him and Robin will make great eyes, and blush and look at him from under her lashes as if she were going to cry with joy—like Alice in the Ben Bolt song. She'll 'weep with delight when he gives her a smile and tremble with fear at his frown.' His mother can't stop it, however furious she may be. Nothing can stop that sort of thing when it once begins."
"If England declares war Donal Muir will have more serious things to do than pursue adventures," was Coombe's comment. He looked serious himself as he said the words, because they brought before him the bodily strength and beauty of the lad. He seemed suddenly to see him again as he had looked when he was dancing. And almost at the same moment he saw other scenes than ball-rooms and heard sounds other than those drawn forth by musicians screened with palms. He liked the boy. He was not his son, but he liked him. If he had been his son, he thought—! He had been through the monster munition works at Essen several times and he had heard technical talks of inventions, the sole reason for whose presence in the world was that they had the power to blow human beings into unrecognisable, ensanguined shreds and to tear off limbs and catapult them into the air. He had heard these powers talked of with a sense of natural pride in achievement, in fact with honest and cheerful self gratulation.
He had known Count Zeppelin well and heard his interesting explanation of what would happen to a thickly populated city on to which bombs were dropped.
But Feather's view was lighter and included only such things as she found entertaining.
"If there's a war the heirs of great families won't be snatched at first," she quite rattled on. "There'll be a sort of economising in that sort of thing. Besides he's very young and he isn't in the Army. He'd have to go through some sort of training. Oh, he'll have time! And there'll be so much emotion and excitement and talk about parting forever and 'This may be the last time we ever meet' sort of thing that every boy will have adventure—and not only boys. When I warned Robin, the night before she went away, I did not count on war or I could have said more—"