A fine boy in
Highland kilts was playing a few yards away. Robin felt something
like a warm flood rush over her and her joy was so great and
exquisite that she wondered if Anne felt her hand trembling. Anne
did not because she was looking at a lady getting into a carriage
across the street.
The marvel of that early summer morning in the gardens of a
splendid but dingy London square thing was not a thing for which
human words could find expression. It was not an earthly thing,
or, at least, not a thing belonging to an earth grown old. A child
Adam and Eve might have known something like it in the Garden of
Eden. It was as clear and simple as spring water and as warm as
the sun.
Anne's permission to "play" once given, Robin found her way behind
the group of lilacs and snowballs. Donal would come, not only
because he was so big that Nanny would let him do what he wanted
to do, but because he would do everything and anything in the
world. Donal! Donal! Her heart was a mere baby's heart but it
beat as if she were seventeen--beat with pure rapture. He was all
bright and he would laugh and laugh.
The coming was easy enough for Donal. He had told his mother and
Nanny rejoicingly about the little girl he had made friends with
and who had no picture books. But he did not come straight to
her. He took his picture books under his arm, and showing all his
white teeth in a joyous grin, set out to begin their play properly
with a surprise.
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