He laughed at Robin's description of the desertion of Percival Tubbs.
"Poor man, I guess I'd driven him crazy, anyway. I simply couldn't learn the lessons he gave me. But, oh, I haven't wasted my time, truly, for I've gotten more out of these precious books here than I ever got out of school. Guardian dear, they've made me grow. I don't think my pretend stories any more, either. I can't seem to, for everything about me is so real and so big and so—so important." Robin imparted this information with a serious note in her voice—as though she feared her guardian might be sorry that she had put her childish "pretends" behind her.
"Dear me," he said, "then we won't know whether you meet the Prince in the last chapter and live happily ever after? You have grown up; I can't get used to it."
Robin blushed furiously at this and changed the subject lest her guardian could glimpse under her flaming hair and guess the one pretty "pretend" she still cherished.
While the girls were upstairs Mrs. Lynch told Cornelius Allendyce the story of Susy, and Robin's visit to the old house. She told it simply but in its every detail so that Robin's guardian could follow it very closely. He listened, with his eyes dropped to the rug at his feet, and for a few moments he kept them there, so that Mrs. Lynch wondered if he were angry. Then suddenly he looked at her and a smile broke over his face.
"Our little girl's letting down a few barriers, isn't she?" he asked, and Mrs. Lynch, understanding him with her quick instinct, nodded with bright eyes.
"Ah, 'tis true as true what my old Father Murphy once said to me—that wealth is what you give, not what you get!"
The most amazing thing to the lawyer in the new order was the cheerful importance, and the new geniality of Hannah Budge. Accustomed as he was, from long acquaintance with the family, to her sour nature, he caught himself watching her now in a sort of unbelief. He understood her attentiveness to his comfort when she touched his arm and begged a word with him.
"It's about that letter," she whispered, her eyes rolling around for any possible eavesdropper. "I'll ask you not to tell Miss Gordon nor Timothy Harkness. I'm old and new ways are new ways but I'll serve Miss Gordon as I've always served the Forsyths."
A dignity in the old housekeeper's surrender touched Cornelius Allendyce. He patted her shoulder and told her not to worry about the letter; to be sure it had spoiled a rather nice golf match but he ought to have run up to Wassumsic long before.