“Yes, indeed we are,” said her mother, holding her closely for a moment. “Well, I will try to scare the bogies away from my pillow; and after all, there is nothing like happiness for that. Come and help me to clear up the kitchen—we’re being disgracefully idle.”
Her sewing-machine was humming steadily when Robin passed the window an hour later—a truly remarkable figure in blue denim overalls that had belonged to the late Mr. Donald Hurst. They came to her insteps, ending in an artistic fringe where superfluous length had been ruthlessly shorn. She wore an old felt hat which had also been the property of her uncle. It was an outfit reserved for painting; many white splashes testified to the fact that its use was no unnecessary precaution. She carried a can of paint and a large brush, and sang cheerfully as she went. The strains of “Why Did I Kiss That Girl?” mingled with the chatter of cockatoos in the tree-tops.
Mrs. Hurst looked, and smiled, and sighed. There was no doubt that Robin asked nothing better than her present existence. She seemed to have put away all the childish irresponsibility that had made her school career a series of mad pranks, throwing herself into her unaccustomed work with whole-hearted vigour and complete happiness. But it was more a boy’s life than a girl’s—not the life that Mrs. Hurst had longed to give her. And there was no prospect of anything better. Money anxieties were not the only bogies that had disturbed the mother’s pillow in the night.
Robin was blissfully unconscious of any troubling thoughts. She painted all the morning, using her brush with a fine slap-dash effect that bespattered her overalls even more generously. The spirit of the late Mr. Hurst might have writhed to see the lavishness with which his paint was used. The job was nearly done when Mrs. Hurst came out to warn her that dinner was almost ready. The fence gleamed white against the deep green of the garden, and Robin was by the gate, marking a board “Wet Paint” in letters large enough to warn the most unwary trespasser.
“Just done,” she said, gaily. “Doesn’t it look scumptious, Mother? I think I’ll paint the side-fences, too: it would give the place an almost regal effect, don’t you think?”
“It’s always the way,” Mrs. Hurst said, shaking her head with affected gloom. “I have known many other cases.”
“Cases of what?”
“Paint-fever. You might call it paintitis. They’re very painful.”
“Did you say paint-ful?”
“Agonizing was what I said, I think. The patient begins by painting a curtain-rod, or a book-rack, and that leads to the kitchen-chairs, and then to a garden-fence. After that, she can’t stop. Everything she sees presents itself in a new light—something to be painted. The worst cases go on to decorate the Jersey cow, and the horse, and the pigs. They brighten a property very much, but they’re expensive!”