f
course I am not an authority."

Robin was not asleep, though she had long been in bed with her eyes
closed. She had heard Andrews say to her sister Anne:

"Lord Coombe's the reason. She does not want her boy to see or speak to
him, so she whisked him back to Scotland."

"Is Lord Coombe as bad as they say?" put in Anne, with bated breath.

"As to his badness," Robin heard Andrews answer, "there's some that
can't say enough against him. It's what he is in this house that does
it. She won't have her boy playing with a child like Robin."

Then--even as there flashed upon Robin the revelation of her own
unfitness--came a knock at the door.

She was taken up, dressed in her prettiest frock and led down the narrow
stairway. She heard the Lady say:

"Shake hands with Lord Coombe."

Robin put her hand behind her back--she who had never disobeyed since
she was born!

"Be pretty mannered, Miss Robin my dear," Andrews instructed, "and shake
hands with his Lordship."

Each person in the little drawing-room saw the queer flame in the
child-face. She shrilled out her words:

"Andrews will pinch me--Andrews will pinch me! But--No--No!"

She kept her hands behind her back and hatred surged up in her soul.

In spite of her tender years, the doctor held to the theory that Robin
had suffered a shock; she must be taken away to be helped by the bracing
air of the Norfolk coast. Before she went, workmen were to be seen
coming in and out of the house. When she returned to London, she was led
into rooms she had never been in before--light and airy rooms with
pretty walls and furniture.

It was "a whim of Coombe's," as Feather put it, that she should no
longer occupy the little dog-kennels of nurseries, so these new
apartments had been added in the rear. A whim of his also that Andrews,
whose disciplinary methods included pinching, should be dismissed and
replaced by Dowson, a motherly creature with a great deal of common
sense. Robin's lonely little heart opened to her new nurse, who became
in time her "Dowie."

It was Dowson who made it clear to Lord Coombe, at length, that Robin
had reached the age when she needed a governess, and it was he who said
to Feather a few days later:

"A governess will come here to-morrow at eleven o'clock. She is a
Mademoiselle Valle. She is accustomed to the education of young
children. She will present herself for your approval."

"What on earth can it matter?" Feather cried.

"It does