Robin Redbreast: A Story for Girls

'Lady Myrtle hopes you will come back with us, Aunt Alison,' she said quietly, 'at least to spend the rest of the day, as you wouldn't consent to come to stay for two or three.'

Miss Mildmay, before replying, glanced at her niece with a curious sort of admiration, not altogether free from disappointment.

'Jacinth certainly is extraordinarily self-controlled,' she thought. Very self-controlled, like very reserved people do not always entirely appreciate their own characteristics in another! But aloud she replied much in the same matter-of-fact tone.

'It is very good of her, but I would rather find my own way home from the station. I will come out to Robin Redbreast to-morrow or the day after to have a talk with your mother. She will have more than enough to occupy her to-day.'

Jacinth secretly commended her aunt's good sense, but the younger ones seemed a little sorry. They wanted everybody to be as happy as themselves.

'It isn't that you don't think there'd be room enough in the carriage, Aunt Alison, is it?' said Frances, anxiously. 'For the closed wagonette is coming too for mamma's maid and the luggage, and I wouldn't mind the least bit getting into it.'

'Or I could go on the box,' suggested Eugene. 'I could quite squeeze in between Bailey and Fred, and I'm sure they wouldn't mind.'

'Thank you, dears,' said Miss Mildmay, more warmly than she had spoken to Jacinth; 'thank you very much. No; it is not on that account. And indeed there is plenty of room in here for Eugene extra. But I shall enjoy more, coming to-morrow or the day after, and then you must all spare me your mother for an hour or so.'

The train was late of course. There was that strange odd bit of time we all know so well – of waiting and expectancy, intensified of course in the present case by the fact that the mother they were about to meet was literally a stranger to the three children. Even Jacinth was a good deal paler than her wont, when at last the train slowly steamed into the station and drew up beside the platform where they were standing.

Would she have known her mother, she asked herself afterwards? Scarcely; there were several passengers who might have been the one. She felt almost bewildered when Aunt Alison turned from all, to hurry forward to greet a slight, girlish-looking figure – girlish in herself, though not in attire or bearing – who was gazing about her with eager eyes.

'Eugenia.'

'Alison,' and the two sisters-in-law had caught each other's hands and kissed each other before Jacinth had really taken in that this was 'mamma!'

Then Miss Mildmay drew back without another word than 'Here they are! I did want to give them over to you, myself, you see,' and her usually calm voice trembled a little.

And Jacinth felt an arm thrown round her, and the words whispered into her ear, 'My darling child!' and for almost the first time in her life a choking sensation that was not pain, and a rush to her eyes of tears that were not sorrow, made her dimly conscious that she knew her own nature and its depths less fully than she had imagined.

And then in turn she fell back a little while the two younger ones, with a glad cry from Francie of 'Mamma, mamma!' and a solemn 'It's me; I'm Eugene,' from the small brother, were drawn close, close, by the arms that had not held them for so long, and kissed as they never remembered having been kissed before.

And somehow – I don't think any of them could ever clearly have told how; perhaps Mrs Mildmay's maid had a head on her shoulders and was equal to the occasion – they all found themselves in the landau again; all, that is to say, except Aunt Alison, who stood waving good-bye to them all from the curbstone, her face for once actually rosy with excitement.

'Mamma!' said Frances, and then she stopped short. 'It's too lovely, I can't speak.'

Eugene was stroking his mother's mantle. It was of soft downy material, rich in colour and texture.

'How pretty!' he said.

Jacinth glanced at it and the rest of her mother's attire, and at her mother herself. She felt proud of her, of her undeniable beauty and air of distinction – proud to present her to Lady Myrtle – and yet —

'I wonder if mamma is very much taken up with her clothes,' she thought. 'I wonder if she is extravagant. I expect I shall have to take a good deal upon me, as Lady Myrtle said. I suppose people in India really grow very unpractical.'

Poor Lady Myrtle! Little had she intended her words to be thus travestied.

But the reflection was not disagreeable to Jacinth, to whom a position of responsibility and management was always congenial. She took her mother's hand in hers, and smiling at Eugene replied: 'Yes indeed. What lovely fur trimming, mamma! And what a pretty bonnet! You couldn't have had that in India, surely?'

'No,' said Mrs Mildmay, smiling back at her children, 'I got one or two things in London yesterday. I thought you would like me to look nice, especially as I was going straight to Robin Redbreast. I don't believe poor dear Aunt Alison would have seen any difference if I had come back in the same clothes I went away in all those years ago.'

'No,' agreed Frances, 'I don't believe she would.'

But Jacinth looked a little grave; she could not quite 'make out' her mother.

'Aunt Alison spends almost nothing on herself,' she said. 'She gives away every farthing she possibly can.'

'I know she does, dear. She is the most self-denying person in those ways that I have ever met,' said Mrs Mildmay heartily, though mentally hoping to herself that Jacinth was not very matter-of-fact. But Eugene was looking very solemn.

'What are you thinking of, my boy? his mother asked.

'Those clothes,' he said, 'those clothes what you went away with. They must be wored out. I was only two when you went away, mamma?'

This made them all laugh, which was perhaps a good thing – a slight relief to the over-excitement which in their different ways all had been experiencing.

'Mamma,' said Frances earnestly, when the laughter had calmed down, 'I must tell you, I had no idea you were so pretty. I think you are the very prettiest person I ever saw.'

'So do I,' Eugene chimed in.

Mrs Mildmay could not resist kissing again the two sweet flushed faces.

'My darlings,' she said, 'I hope you will always think so, in one way, even when my hair is white and my face old and wrinkled.'

'I hope,' thought Jacinth to herself, 'I hope mamma isn't – not vain, it's such a contemptible word – but I hope she doesn't care too much for looks and outside things of that kind.'

But the very defining her thoughts startled her. She knew she had no right to begin criticising her mother in this way, and she pulled herself up.

'Mamma,' she said, and her tone was both perfectly natural and simple, and more unconstrained than Mrs Mildmay had yet heard it – 'mamma, isn't it really delightful, and isn't it almost wonderful that we should be all staying with Lady Myrtle and taking you to her? Isn't it really like a fairy story?'

'It is indeed,' said Mrs Mildmay. 'It is wonderful. The way that she seemed to start up just when – so soon after we had lost dear granny, and in a sense our home.'

'It would have been lovely, of course, for you to come back to us anyway,' said Frances, 'but it wouldn't have been so lovely if we'd all been going to Aunt Alison's. It's rather a poky place, you know, mamma, and in India I suppose the houses are all enormous. I can only remember like in a dream, about very big, very white rooms.'

'The last house we've had was far from enormous,' said her mother with a smile, 'still it was very nice. I often wished you and Jassie could have been with us there.'

'But – oh mamma, you'll never go back again,' pleaded Frances. 'We've got dear papa's coming to look forward to now, and after that – never mind where we live, if only we stay together.'

Mrs Mildmay smiled, though for the first time with a touch of sadness.

'Don't let us spoil to-day by looking forward, dear; except, as you say, to your father's coming. If he were here, everything would seem perfect.'

'And here's Robin Redbreast,' exclaimed Jacinth, as they turned the corner of the lane, 'and "Uncle Marmy's gates" wide open in your honour. Generally we drive in at the side. Now, mamma, take a good look. First impressions are everything, you know. Isn't this perfect?'

She seemed full of enthusiasm, which her mother was glad to see and quick to respond to.

'It is beautiful: I have never seen anything like it,' she replied warmly. 'And could there have been a more exquisite day?'

'And mamma, mamma,' cried Eugene, 'you know, don't you, it was all me that got friends with Lady Myrtle; me, with getting —wursty, that day, you know?'

CHAPTER XIV.

A COURAGEOUS PLEADER