Robin wrote letters and copied various documents for the Duchess, she went shopping with her and executed commissions to order. She was allowed to enter into correspondence with the village schoolmistress and the wife of the Vicar at Darte Norham and to buy prizes for notable decorum and scholarship in the school, and baby linen and blankets for the Maternity Bag and other benevolences. She liked buying prizes and the baby clothes very much because—though she was unaware of the fact—her youth delighted in youngness and the fulfilling of young desires. Even oftener and more significantly than ever did eyes turn towards her—try to hold hers—look after her eagerly when she walked in the streets or drove with the Duchess in the high-swung barouche. More and more she became used to it and gradually she ceased to be afraid of it and began to feel it nearly always—there were sometimes exceptions—a friendly thing. She saw friendliness in it because when she caught sight as she so often did of young things like herself passing in pairs, laughing and talking and turning to look into each other’s eyes, her being told her that it was sweet and human and inevitable. They always turned and looked at each other—these pairs—and then they smiled or laughed or flushed a little. As she had not known when first she recognized, as she looked down into the street from her nursery window, that the children nearly always passed in twos or threes and laughed and skipped and talked, so she did not know when she first began to notice these joyous young pairs and a certain touch of exultation in them and feel that it was sweet and quite a simple common natural thing. Her noting and being sometimes moved by it was as natural as her pleasure in the opening of spring flowers or the new thrill of spring birds—but she did not know that either. The brain which has worked through many years in unison with the soul to which it was apportioned has evolved a knowledge which has deep cognizance of the universal law. The brain of the old Duchess had so worked, keeping pace always with its guide, never visualizing the possibility of working alone, also never falling into the abyss of that human folly whose conviction is that all that one sees and gives a special name to is all that exists—or that the names accepted by the world justly and clearly describe qualities, yearnings, moods, as they are. This had developed within her wide perception and a wisdom which was sane and kind to tenderness. As she drove through the streets with Robin beside her she saw the following eyes, she saw the girl’s soft friendly look at the young creatures who passed her glowing and uplifted by the joy of life, and she was moved and even disturbed. After her return from one particular morning’s outing she sent for Dowie. “You have taken care of Miss Robin since she was a little child?” she began. “She was not quite six when I first went to her, your grace.”