"You'd know about HER."
"She wears pretty clothes. Sometimes they float about and sparkle
and she wears little crowns on her head--or flowers. She laughs,"
Robin described eagerly. "A great many people come to see her.
They all laugh. Sometimes they sing. I lie in bed and listen."
"Does she ever come upstairs to the Nursery?" inquired Donal with
a somewhat reflective air.
"Yes. She comes and stands near the door and says, 'Is she quite
well, Andrews?' She does not laugh then. She--she LOOKS at me."
She stopped there, feeling suddenly that she wished very much that
she had more to tell. What she was saying was evidently not very
satisfactory. He seemed to expect more--and she had no more to
give. A sense of emptiness crept upon her and for no reason she
understood there was a little click in her throat.
"Does she only stand near the door?" he suggested, as one putting
the situation to a sort of crucial test. "Does she never sit on a
big chair and take you on her knee?"
"No, no," in a dropped voice. "She will not sit down. She says
the chairs are grubby."
"Doesn't she LOVE you at all?" persisted Donal. "Doesn't she KISS
you?"
There was a thing she had known for what seemed to her a long
time--God knows in what mysterious fashion she had learned it,
but learned it well she had. That no human being but herself was
aware of her knowledge was inevitable.
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