On hearing of this sudden change of plans Robin expressed a polite regretfulness, but the General looked at him with twinkling eyes—he and Robin had come to be on the best of terms of late—and bade him be off to Dublin without any confounded hypocrisy about it.
"You've been wishing me anywhere, my lad, this last week or two except aboard the Seagull," he said. "Not but what you've borne with me—oh, yes, you've borne with me; a lad of my own couldn't have done more: and now you've earned your reward."
So the General went off northward for what was left of the grouse season. Later, he was to go into Sussex for the partridge and pheasant shooting, not so far from where Nelly was living in a state of blissful peace, with excellent reports of Langrishe's recovery coming by every mail.
And be sure, the Seagull spread her white wings and flew, as fast as wind and wave could carry her, across the Irish Sea.
Sir Robin presented himself unannounced at the little house in Wistaria Terrace, where the youngest but two of the Miss Grays opened the door half-way to him, and was visibly alarmed at the sound of his title.
The little house smelt of cookery, perhaps of washing, although doors and windows were open. But little Robin Drummond cared for that. Beyond the demure child who had admitted him he caught sight of Mary sitting on the shabby little grass-plot, in a wicker-chair, with a Japanese umbrella over her head. And roses could not have been sweeter than the atmosphere.
The simplicity which belonged to his character came out in his dealings with Mary's family. Walter Gray came home to find his daughter's grand lover stretching his long figure on the grass at her feet, while the smaller Grays, their shyness quite departed, rolled and tumbled over him as confident as puppies. To be sure Walter Gray, with his disbelief in distinctions of rank as otherwise than accidental, was not unduly elated by the fine company in which he found himself. He looked hard and long at Robin Drummond as hand met hand. Then a bright look of reassurance came over his face. He could trust even Mary to the owner of those eyes.
They discovered a deal in common later on as they walked, with Mary for a third, in the long twilight and early moonlight. Walter Gray imparted his secret thoughts as to a spiritual brother. His dreams, his aspirations, his Utopia of a world as he would have made it, he laid bare to Robin Drummond in his slow, easy talk, with a hand through his arm.
"He was born to be a great man," Robin Drummond said to Mary later, in a generous enthusiasm, "and he shall not miss his vocation. He must have leisure and ease. When we are married he shall have a corner of the Court to himself, and he shall put his dreams into black and white. I know the room; it looks into an elm-tree, and the owner of the room has the key to the birds' secrets. There is an oriel window, and in the room is a little old organ, yet wonderfully sweet. You shall play to him when he lacks inspiration."
"He could do better with the young ones about him and the mother grumbling placidly in his ear," said Mary.