“Shake mine,” suggested Harrowby, and she obeyed him.
“And mine?” smiled Vesey, with his best allure. She gave him her hand, and, as a result of the allure probably, a tiny smile flickered about the corners of her mouth. He did not look wicked.
“I remain an outcast,” remarked Coombe, as the door closed behind the little figure.
“I detest an ill-mannered child,” said Feather. “She ought to be slapped. We used to be slapped if we were rude.”
“She said Andrews would pinch her. Is pinching the customary discipline?”
“It ought to be. She deserves it.” Feather was quite out of temper. “But Andrews is too good to her. She is a perfect creature and conducts herself like a clock. There has never been the slightest trouble in the Nursery. You see how the child looks—though her face isn’t quite as round as it was.” She laughed disagreeably and shrugged her white undressed shoulders. “I think it’s a little horrid, myself—a child of that age fretting herself thin about a boy.”
CHAPTER XII
But though she had made no protest on being taken out of the drawing-room, Robin had known that what Andrews’ soft-sounding whisper had promised would take place when she reached the Nursery. She was too young to feel more than terror which had no defense whatever. She had no more defense against Andrews than she had had against the man who had robbed her of Donal. They were both big and powerful, and she was nothing. But, out of the wonders she had begun to know, there had risen in her before almost inert little being a certain stirring. For a brief period she had learned happiness and love and woe, and, this evening, inchoate rebellion against an enemy. Andrews led by the hand up the narrow, top-story staircase something she had never led before. She was quite unaware of this and, as she mounted each step, her temper mounted also, and it was the temper of an incensed personal vanity abnormally strong in this particular woman. When they were inside the Nursery and the door was shut, she led Robin to the middle of the small and gloomy room and released her hand.
“Now, my lady,” she said. “I’m going to pay you out for disgracing me before everybody in the drawing-room.” She had taken the child below stairs for a few minutes before bringing her up for the night. She had stopped in the kitchen for something she wanted for herself. She laid her belongings on a chest of drawers and turned about.
“I’m going to teach you a lesson you won’t forget,” she said.