obin gone, I saw but little of Letitia, I was so busy, I suppose, with youth, and she with age. The poet's lamp had burned up bravely all that summer-time, its flame renewed by Robin's coming—or, rather, it was the brief return of his own young English manhood which he lived again in that fine, clean Devon lad. Robin gone, he felt more keenly how far he was from youth and Devonshire, what a long journey he had come to age and helplessness, and his feeble life burned dimmer than before.
Two or three years slipped by. The charm was gone which had drawn me daily through the hole in our picket-fence. Even the doctor's Rugby tales no longer held me, I knew them so by heart. When he began some old beginning, my mind recited so much more glibly than his faltering tongue, I had leaped to the end before he reached the middle of his story. He was given now to wandering in his narratives, and while he droned there in his chair, my own mind wandered where it listed, or I played restlessly with my cap and tried hard not to yawn, longing to be out-of-doors again. Many a time has my conscience winced, remembering that eagerness to desert one who had been so kind to me, who had led my fancies into pure-aired ways and primrose paths—a little too English and hawthorn-scented, some may think, for a good American, but we meant no treason. He, before Robin, had given my mind an Old-World bent never to be altered. Only last evening, with Master Shallow and a certain well-known portly one of Windsor fame, I drank right merrily and ate a last year's pippin with a dish of caraways in an orchard of ancient Gloucestershire. Before me as I write there hangs a drawing of pretty Sally of the alley and the song. Between the poet and that other younger Devonshire lad, they wellnigh made me an English boy.
We heard from Robin—rather, Letitia did. He never wrote to me, but sent me his love in Letitia's letters and a book from London, Lorna Doone, for the Christmas following his return. Letitia told me of him now and then. She knew when he left Cambridge and we sent him a present—or, rather, Letitia did—Essays of Emerson, which she bought with money that could be ill-spared, and she wrote an inscription in it, "From Grassy Fordshire, in memory of the Seventh Slice." She knew when he went back home to Devon, and then, soon afterwards, I believe, when he left England and went out to India. Now, she did not tell me that wonderful piece of news till it was old to her, which was strange, I thought. I remember my surprise. I had been wondering where Robin was and saying to her that he must be in London—perhaps in Parliament!—making his way upward in the world, for I never doubted that he would be an earl some day.
"Oh no," Letitia said, when I mentioned London. "He is in India."
"India! Mr. Bob in India?"
"Yes. He went—why, he went last autumn! Didn't you know?"
No, I did not know. Why, I asked, and as reproachfully as I could make the question—why had she never told me?
She must have forgotten, she replied, penitent—there were so many things to remember.
True, I argued, but she ought at least to have charged her mind with what was to me such important news. Mr. Bob and I were dear, dear friends, I reminded her. He had gone to India, and I had not known!
She knew it, she said, humbly. She would never forgive herself. I did not go near her for days, I remember, and long afterwards her offence still rankled in my mind. Had she not spread that slice on Sun Dial, never to forget? When next I saw her I made a rebuking point of it, asking her if she had heard from Robin. She shook her head. Months passed and no letter came.