She would have looked at a
little watch a thousand times; she would have walked up and down
and round and round the garden never losing sight of the gate--or
any other point for that matter--for more than a minute. Each
sound of the church clock striking a few streets away would have
brought her young heart thumping into her throat.
But a child has no watch, no words out of which to build hopes
and fears and reasons, arguments battling against anguish which
grows--palliations, excuses. Robin, could only wait in the midst
of a slow dark, rising tide of something she had no name for. This
slow rising of an engulfing flood she felt when pins and needles
began to take possession of her feet, when her legs ached, and her
eyes felt as if they had grown big and tightly strained. Donal!
Donal! Donal!
Who knows but that some echo of the terror against which she had
fought and screamed on the night when she had lain alone in the dark
in her cradle and Feather had hid her head under the pillow--came
back and closed slowly around and over her, filling her inarticulate
being with panic which at last reached its unbearable height?
She had not really stood waiting the entire morning, but she was
young enough to think that she had and that at any moment Anne
might come and take her away. He had not come running--he had not
come laughing--he had not come with his plaid swinging and his
feather standing high! There came a moment when her strained eyes
no longer seemed to see clearly! Something like a big lump crawled
up into her throat! Something of the same sort happened the day
she had burst into a wail of loneliness and Andrews had pinched
her.
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