Her heart contracted at the memory.  How sweet those early days had been!  But the roses had faded, the nightingales had ceased to sing.  It was all over now—­all over.  The dream was shattered, and she was weary unto death.

CHAPTER VII

THE SACRIFICE

“I expect it’s one of them abscies again,” said Mrs. Rickett sympathetically.  “Have you been to the doctor about it, my dear?”

Robin, sitting heaped in the wooden arm-chair in her kitchen, looked at her with a smouldering glow in his eyes.  “Don’t like doctors,” he muttered.

Mrs. Rickett sighed and went on with her ironing.  “No more do I, Robin.  But we can’t always do without ’em.  Have you told your brother now?”

Robin, sullenly rocking himself to and fro, made no reply for several seconds.  Then very suddenly:  “He asked me if I’d got a headache and I told him No,” he flung out defiantly.  “What’s the good of bothering him?  He can’t do anything.”

“The doctor might, you know,” Mrs. Rickett ventured again, with a glance through the window at Freddy who had been sent out to amuse himself and was staggering with much perseverance in the wake of an elusive chicken.  “It’s wonderful what they can do now-a-days to make things better.”

“Don’t want to be better,” growled Robin.

She turned and looked at him in astonishment.  “You didn’t ought to say that, my dear,” she said.

Again he raised his heavy eyes to hers and something she saw in them—­something she was quite at a loss to define—­went straight to her heart.

“Robin, my dear, what’s the matter?” she said.  “Is there something that’s troubling you?”

Again Robin was silent for a space.  His eyes fell dully to the ground between his feet.  At last, in a tone of muttered challenge, he spoke.  “Don’t want it to get better.  Want it to end.”

“Sakes alive!” said Mrs. Rickett, shocked.  “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

He did not contradict her or lift his eyes again, merely sat there like a hunched baboon, his head on his chest, his monstrous body slowly rocking.

There followed a lengthy silence.  Mrs. Rickett ironed and folded, ironed and folded, with a practised hand, still keeping an eye on the small chicken-chaser outside.

After several minutes, however, the boy’s utter dejection of attitude moved her to attempt to divert his thoughts.  “I wonder when our young lady will be coming to see us again,” she said.

Robin uttered a queer sound in his throat; it was almost like the moan of an animal in pain.  He said nothing.

She gave him an uneasy glance, but still kind-heartedly she persevered in her effort to lift him out of his depression.  “She was always very friendly-like,” she said.  “You liked her, didn’t you Robin?”

Robin shifted his position with a sharp movement as though he winced at some sudden dart of pain.  “What should make her come back?” he said.  “She’ll stay away now she’s gone.”