As a bird in captivity lives in its cage and, perhaps, believes it to be the world, Robin lived in her nursery. She was put to bed and taken up, she was fed and dressed in it, and once a day she was taken out of it downstairs and into the street. That was all.
It is a somewhat portentous thing to realise that a newborn human creature can only know what it is taught. To Robin the Lady Downstairs was merely a radiant and beautiful being of whom one might catch a glimpse through a door, or if one pressed one's face against the window pane at the right moment. On the very rare occasions when the Lady appeared on the threshold of the day-nursery, Robin stood and stared with immense startled eyes and answered in a whisper the banal little questions put to her.
So she remained unaware of mothers and unaware of affection. She never played with other children. Andrews, her nurse—as behooved one employed in a house about which there "was talk" bore herself with a lofty and exclusive air.
"My rule is to keep myself to myself," she said in the kitchen, "and to look as if I was the one that would turn up noses, if noses was to be turned up. There's those that would snatch away their children if I let Robin begin to make up to them."
But one morning, when Robin was watching some quarrelsome sparrows, an old acquaintance surprised Andrews by appearing in the Gardens and engaged her in a conversation so delightful that Robin was forgotten to the extent of being allowed to follow her sparrows round a clump of shrubbery out of sight.
It was while she watched them that she heard footsteps that stopped near her. She looked up. A big boy in Highland kilts and bonnet and sporan was standing by her. He spread and curved his red mouth, then began to run and prance round in a circle, capering like a Shetland pony to exhibit at once his friendliness and his prowess. After a minute or two he stopped, breathing fast and glowing.
"My pony in Scotland does that. His name is Chieftain. I'm called Donal. What are you called?"
"Robin," she answered, her lips and voice trembling with joy. He was so beautiful.
They began to play together while Andrews' friend recounted intimate details of a country house scandal.
Donal picked leaves from a lilac bush. Robin learned that if you laid a leaf flat on the seat of a bench you could prick beautiful patterns on the leaf's greenness. Donal had—in his rolled down stocking—a little dirk. He did the decoration with the point of this while Robin looked on, enthralled.