Tussie tried to make amends for having obstructed her plans by
exerting himself to the utmost to entertain the children as far as
decorum allowed. He encouraged them to sing, he who felt every
ugliness in sound like a blow; he urged them to recite for prizes of
sixpences, he on whose soul Casabianca and Excelsior had much the
effect of scourges on a tender skin; he led them out into a field
between tea and supper and made them run races, himself setting the
example, he who caught cold so easily that he knew it probably meant a
week in bed. Robin helped too, but his exertions were confined to the
near neighbourhood of Priscilla. His mother had been very angry with
him, and he had been very angry with his mother for being angry, and
he had come away from the vicarage with a bad taste in his mouth and a
great defiance in his heart. It was the first time he had said hard
things to her, and it had been a shocking moment,--a moment sometimes
inevitable in the lives of parents and children of strong character
and opposed desires. He had found himself quite unable in his anger to
clothe his hard sayings in forms of speech that would have hidden
their brutal force, and he had turned his back at last on her
answering bitterness and fled to Baker's, thankful to find when he got
there that Priscilla's beauty and the interest of the mystery that
hung about her wiped out every other remembrance.

Priscilla was in the big farm kitchen, looking on at the children
having tea. That was all she did at her party, except go round every
now and then saying pleasant little things to each child; but this
going round was done in so accomplished a manner, she seemed so used
to it, was so well provided with an apparently endless supply of
appropriate remarks, was so kind, and yet so--what was the word?
could it be mechanical?--that Robin for the hundredth time found
himself pondering over something odd, half-remembered, elusive about
the girl. Then there was the uncle; manifestly a man who had never
before been required to assist at a school-treat, manifestly on this
occasion an unhappy man, yet look how he worked while she sat idly
watching, look how he laboured round with cakes and bread-and-butter,
clumsily, strenuously, with all the heat and anxiety of one eager to
please and obey. Yes, that was what he did; Robin had hit on it at
last. This extraordinary uncle obeyed his niece; and Robin knew very
well that Germany was the last country in