“You know the kind of things children like to play with, nurse?” he said.
She respectfully replied that she had had long experience with young desires. She did not know as yet who he was, but there was that about him which made her feel that, while there was no knowing what height his particular exaltation in the matter of rank might reach, one would be safe in setting it high.
“Please go to one of the toy shops and choose for the child what she will like best. Dolls—games—you will know what to select. Send the bill to me at Coombe House. I am Lord Coombe.”
“Thank you, my lord,” Dowson answered, with a sketch of a curtsey, “Miss Robin, you must hold out your little hand and say ‘thank you’ to his lordship for being so kind. He’s told Dowson to buy you some beautiful dolls and picture books as a present.”
Robin’s eyelashes curled against her under brows in her wide, still glance upward at him. Here was “the one” again! She shut her hand tightly into a fist behind her back.
Lord Coombe smiled a little—not much.
“She does not like me,” he said. “It is not necessary that she should give me her hand. I prefer that she shouldn’t, if she doesn’t want to. Good morning, Dowson.”
To the well-regulated mind of Dowson, this seemed treating too lightly a matter as serious as juvenile incivility. She remonstrated gravely and at length with Robin.
“Little girls must behave prettily to kind gentlemen who are friends of their mammas. It is dreadful to be rude and not say ‘thank you’,” she said.
But as she talked she was vaguely aware that her words passed by the child’s ears as the summer wind passed. Perhaps it was all a bit of temper and would disappear and leave no trace behind. At the same time, there was something queer about the little thing. She had a listless way of sitting staring out of the window and seeming to have no desire to amuse herself. She was too young to be listless and she did not care for her food. Dowson asked permission to send for the doctor and, when he came, he ordered sea air.