"What are you doing, you silly little thing," Feather reproved
her. "Shake hands with Lord Coombe."
Robin shook her head fiercely.
"No! No! No! No!" she protested.
Feather was disgusted. This was not the kind of child to display.
"Rude little thing! Andrews, come and make her do it--or take her
upstairs," she said.
Coombe took his gold coffee cup from the mantel.
"She regards me with marked antipathy, as she did when she first
saw me," he summed the matter up. "Children and animals don't hate
one without reason. It is some remote iniquity in my character
which the rest of us have not yet detected." To Robin he said,
"I do not want to shake hands with you if you object. I prefer to
drink my coffee out of this beautiful cup."
But Andrews was seething. Having no conscience whatever, she
had instead the pride of a female devil in her perfection in her
professional duties. That the child she was responsible for should
stamp her with ignominious fourth-ratedness by conducting herself
with as small grace as an infant costermonger was more than
her special order of flesh and blood could bear-and yet she must
outwardly control the flesh and blood.
In obedience to her mistress' command, she crossed the room and
bent down and whispered to Robin. She intended that her countenance
should remain non-committal, but, when she lifted her head, she
met Coombe's eyes and realized that perhaps it had not.
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