She accepted the third floor, as Benby had said, because it was to be rearranged and the Night and Day Nurseries, being thrown into one, repainted and papered would make a decent place to live in. At the beautiful little girl given into her charge she often looked in a puzzled way, because she knew a good deal about children, and about this one there was something odd. Her examination of opened drawers and closets revealed piles of exquisite garments of all varieties, all perfectly kept. In these dingy holes, which called themselves nurseries, she found evidence that money had been spent like water so that the child, when she was seen, might look like a small princess. But she found no plaything—no dolls or toys, and only one picture book, and that had “Donal” written on the fly leaf and evidently belonged to someone else. What exactly she would have done when she had had time to think the matter over, she never knew, because, a few days after her arrival, a tall, thin gentleman, coming up the front steps as she was going out with Robin, stopped and spoke to her as if he knew who she was. “You know the kind of things children like to play with, nurse?” he said. She respectfully replied that she had had long experience with young desires. She did not know as yet who he was, but there was that about him which made her feel that, while there was no knowing what height his particular exaltation in the matter of rank might reach, one would be safe in setting it high. “Please go to one of the toy shops and choose for the child what she will like best. Dolls—games—you will know what to select. Send the bill to me at Coombe House. I am Lord Coombe.” “Thank you, my lord,” Dowson answered, with a sketch of a curtsey, “Miss Robin, you must hold out your little hand and say ‘thank you’ to his lordship for being so kind. He’s told Dowson to buy you some beautiful dolls and picture books as a present.” Robin’s eyelashes curled against her under brows in her wide, still glance upward at him. Here was “the one” again! She shut her hand tightly into a fist behind her back. Lord Coombe smiled a little—not much. “She does not like me,” he said. “It is not necessary that she should give me her hand. I prefer that she shouldn’t, if she doesn’t want to. Good morning, Dowson.” To the well-regulated mind of Dowson, this seemed treating too lightly a matter as serious as juvenile incivility. She remonstrated gravely and at length with Robin. “Little girls must behave prettily to kind gentlemen who are friends of their mammas. It is dreadful to be rude and not say ‘thank you’,” she said.