When Dowson brought in a new doll and other wonderful things, a little hand enclosed her wrist quite tightly as she was unpacking the boxes. It was Robin’s and the small creature looked at her with a questioning, half appealing, half fierce.
“Did he send them, Dowson?”
“They are a present from me,” Dowson answered comfortably, and Robin said again,
“I want to kiss you. I like to kiss you. I do.”
To those given to psychical interests and speculations, it might have suggested itself that, on the night when the creature who had seemed to Andrews a soft tissued puppet had suddenly burst forth into defiance and fearless shrillness, some cerebral change had taken place in her. From that hour her softness had become a thing of the past. Dowson had not found a baby, but a brooding, little, passionate being. She was neither insubordinate nor irritable, but Dowson was conscious of a certain intensity of temperament in her. She knew that she was always thinking of things of which she said almost nothing. Only a sensible motherly curiosity, such as Dowson’s could have made discoveries, but a rare question put by the child at long intervals sometimes threw a faint light. There were questions chiefly concerning mothers and their habits and customs. They were such as, in their very unconsciousness, revealed a strange past history. Lights were most unconsciously thrown by Mrs. Gareth-Lawless herself. Her quite amiable detachment from all shadow of responsibility, her brilliantly unending occupations, her goings in and out, the flocks of light, almost noisy, intimates who came in and out with her revealed much to a respectable person who had soberly watched the world.
“The Lady Downstairs is my mother, isn’t she?” Robin inquired gravely once.
“Yes, my dear,” was Dowson’s answer.
A pause for consideration of the matter and then from Robin:
“All mothers are not alike, Dowson, are they?”
“No, my dear,” with wisdom.