Mrs. Bennett had only been shocked at her own apparent inattention to duty. She was not really frightened and her nut-cracker face illuminated itself with delighted smiles.
"I don't hear very well at the best of times," she said. "And I've got a bit of a cold. Just worry, Miss, just worry it is—along of this 'ere war and my grandsons going marching off every few days seems like. Dick, that's the youngest as was always my pet, he's the last and he'll be off any minute—and these is his socks."
Robin actually picked up a sock and patted it softly—with a childish quiver of her chin. It seemed alive.
"Yes, yes!" she said. "Oh! dear! Oh! dear!"
Mrs. Bennett winked tears out of her eyes hastily.
"Me being hard of hearing is no excuse for me talking about myself first thing. Dick, he's an Englishman—and they're all Englishmen—and it's Englishmen that's got to stand up and do their duty—same as they did at Waterloo." She swallowed valiantly the lump in her throat. "Her grace wrote to me about you, Miss, with her own kind hand. She said the cottage was so quiet and pretty you wouldn't mind it being little—and me being a bit deaf."
"I shall mind nothing," said Robin. She raised her voice and tried to speak very distinctly so as to make sure that the old fairy woman would hear her. "It is the most beautiful cottage I ever saw in my life. It is like a cottage in a fairy story."
"That's what the vicar says, Miss, my dear," was Mrs. Bennett's cheerful reply. "He says it ought to be hid some way because if the cheap trippers found it out they'd wear the life out of me with pestering me to give 'em six-penny teas. They'd get none from me!" quite fiercely. "Her grace give it to me her own self and it's on Mersham land and not a lawyer on earth could put me out."
She became quite active and bustling—picking a spray of honeysuckle and a few sprigs of mignonette from near the doorway and handing them to Robin.
"Your room's full of 'em," she said, "them and musk and roses. You'll sleep and wake in the midst of flowers and birds singing and bees humming. And I can give you rich milk and home-baked bread, God bless you! You are welcome. Come in, my pretty dear—Miss."