Often, when life and herself got too tumultuous for Rob, she ran down for a breath of Cousin Peace's atmosphere. She saw the pale, calm face she sought at the window as she drew near the house, and, opening the gate, she went up and leaned on the sill without speaking.
Miss Charlotte Grey's thin right hand went out to touch her head. "Ah, Roberta dear, how are you to-day?" she said, as she felt the soft tendrils of curls which she had never seen.
"Pretty horrid, thank you, Cousin Peace," said Rob, penitently, "but very well."
"Anything wrong?" asked "Cousin Peace."
"Nothing new, nothing much, and everything," said Rob, with Delphic ambiguity. "We're not any richer, and Mardy's been worried, but we've found some nice new boy friends. Still, Aunt Azraella's there this afternoon, rather more trying than ordinarily—she even made Wythie furiously mad. So you can see whether good or bad prevails."
"Your Aunt Azraella must not prevail—to anger you, dearie," said Cousin Peace, gently. "She is one of those unfortunate souls that can't see any difference in size between her mountains and her mole-hills. She always reminds me of the old fable of the astronomer who had a fly in his telescope, and thought a new world had rolled into space in the field his glass swept. It is quite as bad as being totally blind to lack perspective, I sometimes think, Robin. If you once grasp the fact that only essentials are essential, dear, you will have mastered the secret of good and happy living. And your Aunt Azraella is not essential," she added, with a merry twist of her lips, as she turned her closed eyes toward Rob, and laughed so blithely that it was evident that she did not want to preach, and that all Rob's visits to her distant cousin were not serious ones.
"She is certainly not essential to my happiness, dear, peaceful cousin," said Rob. "You haven't heard the Iliad of How the Grass Was Cut. Let me relate it." And, seating herself on the upper step, just outside the window, Rob began to tell in her most dramatic manner the story of their new acquaintances and how they had befriended the Greys. As she listened Miss Charlotte's pale face flushed with laughing, and she grew so much younger that it was perfectly clear that Rob not only received, but gave in these visits to the blind woman.
When she arose to go Miss Grey held out both hands and kissed Rob, who had to hold aside the syringa bushes growing unchecked before the window, in order to reach her cousin.
"Dear Robin, come soon again; you do me as much good as your blithe feathered namesake," said Cousin Peace, holding the strong, brown hands a moment between her white ones.
"I'll come; you couldn't keep me away, Cousin Peace," said Rob. "You do me more good than an organ and a stained-glass window, and they help me to feel angelic more than anything I know. Oh, why aren't all relations like you?"