“It’s liking very much. It’s more,” he explained. “My mother loves me. I—I love you!” stoutly. “Yes, I love you. That’s why I kissed you when you cried.”
She was so uplifted, so overwhelmed with adoring gratitude that as she knelt on the grass she worshipped him.
“I love you,” she answered him. “I love you—love you!” And she looked at him with such actual prayerfulness that he caught at her and, with manly promptness, kissed her again—this being mere Nature.
Because he was eight years old and she was six her tears flashed away and they both laughed joyously as they sat down on the grass again to talk it over.
He told her all the pleasant things he knew about Mothers. The world was full of them it seemed—full. You belong to them from the time you were a baby. He had not known many personally because he had always lived at Braemarnie, which was in the country in Scotland. There were no houses near his home. You had to drive miles and miles before you came to a house or a castle. He had not seen much of other children except a few who lived at the Manse and belonged to the minister. Children had fathers as well as mothers. Fathers did not love you or take care of you quite as much as Mothers—because they were men. But they loved you too. His own father had died when he was a baby. His mother loved him as much as he loved her. She was beautiful but—it seemed to reveal itself—not like the Lady Downstairs. She did not laugh very much, though she laughed when they played together. He was too big now to sit on her knee, but squeezed into the big chair beside her when she read or told him stories. He always did what his mother told him. She knew everything in the world and so knew what he ought to do. Even when he was a big man he should do what his mother told him.
Robin listened to every word with enraptured eyes and bated breath. This was the story of Love and Life and it was the first time she had ever heard it. It was as much a revelation as the Kiss. She had spent her days in the grimy Nursery and her one close intimate had been a bony woman who had taught her not to cry, employing the practical method of terrifying her into silence by pinching her—knowing it was quite safe to do it. It had not been necessary to do it often. She had seen people on the streets, but she had only seen them in passing by. She had not watched them as she had watched the sparrows. When she was taken down for a few minutes into the basement, she vaguely knew that she was in the way and that Mrs. Blayne’s and Andrews’ and Jennings’ low voices and occasional sidelong look meant that they were talking about her and did not want her to hear.
“I have no mother and no father,” she explained quite simply to Donal. “No one kisses me.”
“No one!” Donal said, feeling curious. “Has no one ever kissed you but me?”
“No,” she answered.
Donal laughed—because children always laugh when they do not know what else to do.