“There’s the Lady Downstairs,” she said. “She’s so pretty—so pretty.” “Is she——” he stopped and shook his head. “She couldn’t be your mother,” he corrected himself. “You’d know about _her_.” “She wears pretty clothes. Sometimes they float about and sparkle and she wears little crowns on her head—or flowers. She laughs,” Robin described eagerly. “A great many people come to see her. They all laugh. Sometimes they sing. I lie in bed and listen.” “Does she ever come upstairs to the Nursery?” inquired Donal with a somewhat reflective air. “Yes. She comes and stands near the door and says, ‘Is she quite well, Andrews?’ She does not laugh then. She—she _looks_ at me.” She stopped there, feeling suddenly that she wished very much that she had more to tell. What she was saying was evidently not very satisfactory. He seemed to expect more—and she had no more to give. A sense of emptiness crept upon her and for no reason she understood there was a little click in her throat. “Does she only stand near the door?” he suggested, as one putting the situation to a sort of crucial test. “Does she never sit on a big chair and take you on her knee?” “No, no,” in a dropped voice. “She will not sit down. She says the chairs are grubby.” “Doesn’t she _love_ you at all?” persisted Donal. “Doesn’t she _kiss_ you?” There was a thing she had known for what seemed to her a long time—God knows in what mysterious fashion she had learned it, but learned it well she had. That no human being but herself was aware of her knowledge was inevitable. To whom could she have told it? But Donal—Donal wanted to know all about her. The little click made itself felt in her throat again. “She—she doesn’t _like_ me!” Her dropped voice was the whisper of one humbled to the dust by confession, “She—doesn’t _like_ me!” And the click became another thing which made her put up her arm over her eyes—her round, troubled child eyes, which, as she had looked into Donal’s, had widened with sudden, bewildered tears. Donal flung his arms round her and squeezed his buttons into her tender chest. He hugged her close; he kissed her; there was a choking in his throat. He was hot all over. “She does like you. She must like you. I’ll make her!” he cried passionately. “She’s not your mother. If she was, she’d _love_ you! She’d _love_ you!” “Do Mothers l-love you?” the small voice asked with a half sob. “What’s—what’s _love_ you?” It was not vulgar curiosity. She only wanted to find out. He loosed his embrace, sitting back on his heels to stare. “Don’t you _know?_” She shook her head with soft meekness. “N-no,” she answered.