The Head of the House of CoombeBurnett, Frances Hodgson
General
The Head of the House of Coombe
Burnett, Frances Hodgson
England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
The Garden of Eden it remained for two weeks. Andrews’ cold was serious
enough to require a doctor and her sister Anne continued to perform
their duties. The weather was exceptionally fine and, being a vain
young woman, she liked to dress Robin in her pretty clothes and take
her out because she was a beauty and attracted attention to her nurse
as well as to herself. Mornings spent under the trees reading were
entirely satisfactory. Each morning the children played together and
each night Robin lay awake and lived again the delights of the past
hours. Each day she learned more wonders and her young mind and soul
were fed. There began to stir in her brain new thoughts and the
beginning of questioning. Scotland, Braemarnie, Donal’s mother, even
the Manse and the children in it, combined to form a world of
enchantment. There were hills with stags living in them, there were
moors with purple heather and yellow brome and gorse; birds built their
nests under the bushes and Donal’s pony knew exactly where to step even
in the roughest places. There were two boys and two girls at the Manse
and they had a father and a mother. These things were enough for a new
heaven and a new earth to form themselves around. The centre of the
whole Universe was Donal with his strength and his laugh and his eyes
which were so alive and glowing that she seemed always to see them. She
knew nothing about the thing which was their somehow—not-to-be-denied
allure. They were _asking_ eyes—and eyes which gave. The boy was in
truth a splendid creature. His body and beauty were perfect life and
joyous perfect living. His eyes asked other eyes for everything. “Tell
me more,” they said. “Tell me more! Like me! Answer me! Let us give
each other everything in the world.” He had always been well, he had
always been happy, he had always been praised and loved. He had known
no other things.
During the first week in which the two children played together, his
mother, whose intense desire it was to understand him, observed in him
a certain absorption of mood when he was not talking or amusing himself
actively. He began to fall into a habit of standing at the windows,
often with his chin in his hand, looking out as if he were so full of
thought that he saw nothing. It was not an old habit, it was a new one.
“What are you thinking about, Donal?” she asked one afternoon.
He seemed to awaken, as it were, when he heard her. He turned about
with his alluring smile.
“I am thinking it is _funny_,” he said. “It is funny that I should like
such a little girl such a lot. She is years and years younger than I
am. But I like her so. It is such fun to tell her things.” He marched
over to his mother’s writing table and leaned against it. What his
mother saw was that he had an impassioned desire to talk about this
child. She felt it was a desire even a trifle abnormal in its
eagerness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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