I was always--remembering."

"You'll think now," Dowie answered. "It's only Nature."

"Yes--it's only Nature."

The touch of her hand on the pamphlet was a sort of caress--it was a
touch which clung.

"Dowie," timidly. "I want to begin to make some little clothes like
these. Do you think I can?"

"Well, my dear," answered Dowie composedly--no less so because it was
past midnight and the stillness of moor and deserted castle rooms was
like a presence in itself. "I taught you to sew very neatly before you
were twelve. You liked to do it and you learned to make beautiful small
stitches. And Mademoiselle taught you to do fine embroidery. She'd
learned it in a convent herself and I never saw finer work anywhere."

"I did like to do it," said Robin. "I never seemed to get tired of
sitting in my little chair in the bay window where the flowers grew, and
making tiny stitches."

"You had a gift for it. Not all girls have," said Dowie. "Sometimes when
you were embroidering a flower you didn't want to leave it to take your
walk."

"I am glad I had a gift," Robin took her up. "You see I want to make
these little things with my own hands. I don't want them sent up from
London. I don't want them bought. Look at this, Dowie."

Dowie went to her side. Her heart was quickening happily as it beat.

Robin touched a design with her finger.

"I should like to begin by making that," she suggested. "Do you think
that if I bought one for a pattern I could copy it?"

Dowie studied it with care.

"Yes," she said. "You could copy it and make as many more as you liked.
They need a good many."

"I am glad of that," said Robin. "I should like to make a great many."
The slim fingers slid over the page. "I should like to make that
one--and that--and that." Her face, bent over the picture, wore its
touching _young_ look thrilled with something new. "They are so
_pretty_--they are so pretty," she murmured like a dove.

"They're the prettiest things in the world," Dowie said. "There never
was anything prettier."

"It must be wonderful to make them and to know all the time you are
putting in the tiny stitches, that they are for something little--and
warm--and alive!"

"Those that have done it never forget it," said Dowie. Robin lifted her
face, but her hands still held the book with the touch which clung.

"I am beginning to realise what a strange life mine has been," she said.
"Don't you think it has, Dowie? I haven't known things