“Oh, I am not sure! Where shall we find her,––in the library?”
“Yes; come along! Get up your circulation; you’ll need it!”
“Aunt de Tracy, there is something at Stoke Revel I am very anxious to have if you will give it to me,” said Robinette, as she came into the library a few minutes later.
Mrs. de Tracy looked up from her knitting 124 solemnly. “If it belongs to me, I shall no doubt be willing, as I know you would not ask for anything out of the common; but I own little here; nearly all is Carnaby’s.”
“This was my mother’s,” said Robinette. “It is a picture hanging in the smoking room; one that was a great favorite of hers, called ‘Robinetta.’ Her drawing-master found an Italian artist in London who went to the National Gallery and made a copy of the Sir Joshua picture, and I was named after it.”
“I wish your mother could have been a little less romantic,” sighed Mrs. de Tracy. “There were such fine old family names she might have used: Marcia and Elspeth, and Rosamond and Winifred!”
“I am sorry, Aunt de Tracy. If I had been consulted I believe I should have agreed with you. Perhaps when my mother was in America the family ties were not drawn as tightly as in the former years?”
“If it was so, it was only natural,” said the 125 old lady. “However, if you ask Carnaby, and if the picture has no great value, I am sure he will wish you to have it, especially if you know it to have been your mother’s property.” Here Carnaby sauntered into the room. “That’s all right, grandmother,” he said, “I heard what you were saying; only I wish it was a real Sir Joshua we were giving Cousin Robin instead of a copy!”
“Thank you, Carnaby dear, and thank you, too, Aunt de Tracy. You can’t think how much it is to me to have this; it is a precious link between mother’s girlhood, and mother, and me.” So saying, she dropped a timid kiss upon Mrs. de Tracy’s iron-grey hair, and left the room.
“If she could live in England long enough to get over that excessive freedom of manner, your cousin would be quite a pleasing person, but I am afraid it goes too deep to be cured,” Mrs. de Tracy remarked as she smoothed the hairs that might have been ruffled by Robinette’s kiss.