Dame Barbara was quite satisfied and greatly delighted.
"Here," she said, fumbling for her substantial purse, "a groat for two ounces of it, did you say? No, a half-groat only? My dear, you'll have to raise your prices if the perfume is so excellent! Well to begin with, give me the four ounces straight away, and here's a half-groat over and above what it all comes to—dried leaves and fresh ones and flowers, all together—just the tiny silver piece for luck, you know."
Aria and Linde smiled and thanked her. And the thanks were repeated, when, as she turned away, she called out, "I'll be the first to tell my cronies of this. Dear, dear, I feel as if I were in a fairy garden myself with the pleasure of the perfume. I had no idea that the robins' forest had such treasures of roses. For you live in the forest, do you not, or close by?"
"Yes, just at its edge," they replied, "but," Linde went on eagerly, "we never knew it was called after the robins. It is odd that we never heard it."
Dame Barbara nodded sagaciously.
"'Tis a very old name. Scarce a one but myself knows of it, nowadays," she said. "No wonder you children never heard it. There was an ancient story—just a foolish tale—that the fairies haunted the forest, till one day some cruel or stupid person killed a robin. Robins used to abound there, and they are their special favourites, you know, and since then never a fairy or a robin has been seen there. But I must hurry off to finish my marketing."
Aria and Linde looked at each other.
"It must mean something," said Linde in a low and almost awe-struck tone. "My dream, I mean, and the old woman saying, 'Ask the robin.'"
"Yes," her sister agreed. "It is odd too that we never heard the old name or the old story before. I wonder if father had? I have a sort of remembrance of his once saying something about our being too near the forest for robins to make their home with us, but I had a silly childish idea that he only meant that all robins disliked forests."
"I think I must have had the same notion," said Linde, "for we have both of us now and then wished that robins would make their nests in our garden, but we just thought they never would! We have hardly ever seen one."