"I'll be the same proud, overbearing old lady," she had told her lawyer, but she had been mistaken—she could never be quite that again, for she had found too much pure delight in doing the little things Robin quite artlessly suggested—little things which had not been easy at first and which had seemed to demand too great a sacrifice of her pride.
The passing of time for the three at the Manor, Madame, Mrs. Budge and Harkness, was marked, Mother Lynch well knew, by Robin's coming and going. For, when her Jimmie had returned from southern seas, Robin had insisted upon going straight to him, and it was not until her aunt had laid aside the last shred of her old prejudice and invited Robin's father to the Manor for a long visit that Robin had consented to look upon the Manor as her "home," though, even then, she steadfastly asserted "part" of her time must be spent with Jimmie.
While at the Manor James Forsyth had painted his "Wood Sprite," which won for him quick and wide recognition, and ever afterward Robin and Madame Forsyth referred to it as "our picture."
No, Mother Moira was never lonesome.
A gay voice roused her now from her happy reverie, footsteps rustled the grass, cool hands, with a touch as light as the blowing petals, closed over her eyes.
"Dreaming again, little Mom? You're incurable!" And Beryl, with a laugh, dropped upon the ground close to the hammock, one hand closing over her mother's.
"It's a bit of a cat-nap I'm stealing," fibbed Mother Moira, blushing like a girl. Her eyes lingered adoringly on the glowing, flushed face close to hers. "Where have you been, Beryl?"
"Susy coaxed me off to her fairy spring. It's really a lovely little nook she's found and she's made a doll's house in the hollow of an old tree. She's a funny little thing—almost elfin, isn't she? Are you sure she isn't too much trouble for you and Dad, Mother?"
"Trouble? Bless the little heart of the colleen, it's something happening every minute for it's an imp of mischief she is, but, Beryl, I like it. It keeps my own heart young."
"As though your heart would ever grow old! You're like Robin. Oh, mother, you can't know how lonesome I've been over there in Milan for the sight of you and this little place. I think my soul, the one poor dear Jacques Henri tried to find in me and didn't—wakened one night when I actually cried myself to sleep just longing to feel your arms around me! Oh, when one has a mother and a home like mine to want to come to, it ought to be easy to keep beautiful inside, the way the dear man said!" And Beryl, staring thoughtfully out over the valley, did not see the glow that transformed her mother's face.