Coombe turned slightly towards them.
Feather nodded, with a lightly significant air.
“It was her boy,” she said, and then she laughed and nodded at Coombe.
“He was quite as handsome as you said he was. No wonder poor Robin fell prostrate. He ought to be chained and muzzled by law when he grows up.”
“But so ought Robin,” threw in the Starling in her brusque, young mannish way.
“But Robin’s only a girl and she’s not a parti,” laughed Feather. Her eyes, lifted to Coombe’s, held a sort of childlike malice. “After his mother knew she was Miss Gareth-Lawless, he was not allowed to play in the Gardens again. Did she take him back to Scotland?”
“They went back to Scotland,” answered Coombe, “and, of course, the boy was not left behind.”
“Have you a child five years old?” asked Vesey in his low voice of Feather. “You?”
“It seems absurd to me,” said Feather, “I never quite believe in her.”
“I don’t,” said Vesey. “She’s impossible.”