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had centred round Robin, she saw that he had seen her and heard his silvery little voice call out: ‘Grannie! Grannie!’ And leaving his nurse’s hand he came running to her across the short thick grass where geese grazed and a group of village dogs wrestled together in the sunlight.

Monica stooped and held out her arms to him. It seemed to her as she enfolded his eager little form that he was far more hers than Hester’s. What right had dark Hester to this golden little boy? Only the shape of his eyes reminded her of his mother; the white showing under the iris, as hers did;—the shape of his eyes and the faint tone of olive colour where the gold of his cheek merged into his neck.

‘Can’t I come and see the fountain, Grannie?’ he said, while Nurse followed him smiling. Nurse was a great friend of Monica’s, whose attitude towards servants was untheoretic and spontaneous. Hester’s relations with hers, she had observed, were not very successful. Hester thought, perhaps, too much of their rights and too little of their happiness; and Nurse, she suspected, was old-fashioned and ignorant like herself and did not like to have Robin made to tell his dreams. ‘Can he come in for a moment, do you think?’ she asked. ‘Is Mrs. Wil-