W

hen our boy was born we named him Robin Weatherby, after that elder Robin who had charmed my youth. If his babyhood lacked aught of love or discipline, it was neither Dove's fault nor Letitia's, for Robin's mother had ideas and a book on childhood, and dear Letitia did not need a book. In fact, she clashed with Dove's. I, as physician-in-ordinary to my child—for in dire emergencies in my own family I always employ an old-fogy, rival—was naturally of some little service in consultation with the two ladies and the Book. Of the characters of these associates of mine, I need only say that Dove was ever an anxious soul, the Book a truthful but at times a vague one, while Letitia was all that could be desired as guide, philosopher, and friend. Alarming symptoms might puzzle others, but never her; they might, even to myself, even to the Book, bode any one of twenty kinds of evil; to her they pointed solely, solemnly to one—that one, alas! which had carried off some dear child of her school.

Dove, I am sure, had never been impatient with Letitia, but now, such was the tension of these family conferences and such the gravity of the case involved, there were times, I noted, when the cousins addressed each other with the most exquisite and elaborate courtesy, lest either should think the other in the least disturbed. For example, there was that little affair of consolation—a sort of rubber make-believe with which young Robin curbed and soothed his appetite and invited pensiveness. Microbes, Letitia said, were—

Dove interposed to remind her that the things were boiled just seven—

Germs, Letitia argued, were not to be trifled with.

"Just seven times a week, my dear," said Dove, triumphantly.

"And besides," Letitia continued, undismayed, "they will ruin the shape of the child's mouth."

"But how?" cried Dove. "Pray tell me how, my love, when they are made in the very identical im—"

"And modern doctors," Letitia stated with some severity, "are doing away with so many foolish notions of our grandmothers."

"Yet our fathers and mothers," Dove replied, "were very fair specimens of the race, my dear. Shakespeare, doubtless, was rocked in a cradle, and his brains survived. They were quite intact, I think you will admit. He wasn't joggled into—"

"Yet who knows what he might have written, dear love," answered Letitia, "if he had been permitted to lie quite—"

"You try to make a child go to sleep, my darling, without something!" my wife suggested. "Just try it once, my dear."

"Cradles," said Letitia—but at this juncture I stepped in, authoritatively, as the father of my child. It is due to Dove, I confess gladly, and partly to Letitia also, that this fatherhood has been so pleasant to look back upon. Robin's mouth is very normal, as even Letitia will admit, I know, as she would be the last person in the world to say that his brains had suffered any in the joggling. Somehow, by dint of boiling the consolation I suppose, and by what-not formulÆ, we got him up at last on two of the sturdiest, little, round, brown legs that ever splashed in mud-puddle—Dove's Darling, my Old Fellow, and Letitia's Love.

Love she called him in their private moments, and other names as fond, I have no doubt; publicly he was her Archer, her Bowman, her Robin Hood. She, it was, who purchased him bow-and-arrows, and replaced for him without a murmur, three panes in the library windows and a precious little wedding vase. The latter cost her a pretty penny, but she reminded us that a boy, after all, will be a boy! She took great pride in his better marksmanship and sought a suit for him, a costume that should be traditional of archers bold.

"Have you cloth," she asked, "of the shade called Lincoln green?"

The clerk was doubtful.

"I'll see," she said. "Oh, Mr. Peabody! Mr. Peabody!"

"Well?" asked a man's voice hidden behind a wall of calicoes. "Well? What is it?"

"Mr. Peabody, have we any cloth called Abraham—"

"Not Abraham Lincoln," Letitia interposed, mildly. "You misunderstood me. I said Lincoln green."

"Same thing," said the clerk, tartly.

Mr. Peabody then emerged smilingly from behind his wall.

"How do you do, Miss Primrose," said he. "What can we do for you this morning?" Letitia carefully repeated her request. He shook his head, while the young clerk smiled triumphantly.

"No," he said. "You must be mistaken. I have never even heard of such a color—and if there was one of that name," he added, with evident pride in his even tones, "I should certainly know of it. We have other greens—"

Letitia flushed.

"Why," she explained, "the English archers were accustomed to wearing a cloth called Lincoln green."

Mr. Peabody smiled deprecatingly.

"I never heard of it," he replied, stiffly; "and, as I say, I have been in the business for thirty years."

"But don't you remember Robin Hood and his merry men?"

"Oh!" exclaimed the merchant, a great light breaking in upon him. "You mean the fairy stories! Ha, ha! Very good. Very good, indeed. Well, no, Miss Primrose, I'm afraid we can hardly provide you with the cloth that fairies—"

"Show me your green cloths—all of them," said Letitia, her cheeks burning.

"Certainly, Miss Primrose. Miss Baggs, show Miss Primrose all of our green cloths—all of them."

"Light green or dark green?" queried Miss Baggs, who had been delighted with the whole affair.

Letitia pondered. There had been some reason, she reflected, for Robin Hood's choice of gear.

"Something," she said, at last—"something as near to the shade of foliage as you can give me."

"I beg pardon?" inquired Miss Baggs.

"The color of leaves," explained Letitia.

"Well," Miss Baggs retorted, smartly, "some leaves are light, and some are dark, and some leaves are in-between."

There was a dangerous gleam in Letitia's eyes. "Show me all your green cloths," she requested, curtly—"all of them." Miss Baggs obeyed.

"I suppose it really isn't Lincoln green, you know," Letitia said, when she had brought the parcel home with her and had spread its contents upon the sofa, "but I hope you'll like it, Dove. It is the nearest to tree-green I could find."

It was, indeed.

Now, Dove had never heard of a boy in green, and had grave doubts, which it would not do, however, to even hint to dear Letitia; so made it was, that archer-suit, though by some strange freak of fancy that caused Letitia keen regret, Robin, dressed in it, could seldom be induced to play at archery, always insisting, to her discomfiture, that he was Grass!

"When you grow up, my bowman," she once told him, "I'll buy you a white suit, all of flannel, and father shall teach you to play at cricket in the orchard."

"But crickets are black," cried Robin, whose eye for color, or the absence of it, I told Letitia, was bound to ruin her best-laid English plans.

It was good to see them, the Archer Bold and the Gray Lady walking together, hand-in-hand—the one beaming up, the other down; the one so subject to sudden leaps and bounds and one-legged hoppings to avoid the cracks, the other flurried lest those wild friskings should disturb the balance she had kept so perfectly all those years till then.

In their walks and talks lay many stories, I am sure—things which never will be written unless Letitia turns to authorship, for which it is a little late, I fear; but even then she would never dream of putting such simple matters down. She does not know at all the delicious Lady of the Linen Reticule, who, to herself, is commonplace enough. She might, perhaps, make a tale or two of the Archer in Lincoln Green, but what is the romance of an archer without the lady in it?

One drowsy afternoon on a Sunday in summer-time I stretched myself in my easy-chair with another for my slippered feet. My dinner had ended pleasantly with a love-in-a-cottage pudding which had dripped blissfully with a heavenly cataract of golden sauce. Dove had gone out on a Sabbath mission, rustling away in a gown sprinkled with rose-buds—one of those summer things in which it is not quite safe for any woman to risk herself in this wicked world.

Such shallow thoughts were passing through my mind as Dove departed, and when the front gate clicked behind her, I opened a charming novel and went to sleep. I know I slept, for I walked in a path I have never seen. I should like to see it, for it must be beautiful in the spring-time. It was a kind of autumn when I was there. I was dragging my feet about in the yellow leaves, when a senile hollyhock leaned over quietly and tickled me on the ear. As I brushed it away I heard it giggling. Then a twig of pear-tree bent and trifled with my nose, which is a thing no gentleman permits, even in dreams, and I brushed it smartly. Then I heard a voice—I suppose the gardener's—telling something to behave itself. Then I swished again among the leaves. How long I swished there I have no notion, but I heard more voices by-and-by, and I remember saying to myself, "They are behind the gooseberries." They did not know, of course, that I was there, else they had talked more softly.

"No," said he, "you be the horsey."

"Oh no," said the other, "I'd rather drive."

"No, you be the horsey."

"Sh! Let me drive."

"I said you be the horsey."

"I be the horsey?"

"Yes. Whoa, horsey! D'up! Whoa! D'up!"

Then all was confusion behind the gooseberries and the horsey d'upped and whoaed, and whoaed and d'upped, till I all but d'upped. I did move, and the noise stopped.

How long I slept there I do not know, but I heard again those voices behind the vines, though more subdued now, mere tender undertones like lovers in a garden seat. Lovers I supposed them, and, keeping still, I listened:

"But I'm not your little boy," said one, "because you haven't any."

"Oh yes, you are," replied the other, confidently. "You're my little boy because I love you."

"But why don't you ask God to send you a little boy all your own, just four years old like me, so we could play together? Why don't you?"

"Because," the reply was, "you're all the little boy I need."

"But if you did ask God and the angel brought you a little boy, then his name would be Billie."

"Oh, would it?"

"Yes, his name would be Billie, because now Billie is the next name to Robin."

"What do you mean by the next name to Robin?"

"Why, 'cause now, first comes Robin, and then comes Billie, and then comes Tommy, or else Muffins, if you turn the corner—unless he's a girl—and then he's Annie."

"What?" gasped the second voice. "I don't understand."

"Well, then," the first voice answered, wearily, "call him Johnny."

I know at the time the explanation seemed quite clear to me, as it must have been to the second speaker, for the colloquy ended then and there. I might have peeked through the gooseberries and not been discovered, I suppose, but just then I went out shooting flamingoes with a friend of mine, and when I got back, some time that day, the gooseberry-vines were thick with rose-buds. And while I was gone a brook had come—you could hear it plainly on the other side—and I was surprised, I remember, and angry with my aunt Jemima (I never had an Aunt Jemima) for not telling me. I listened awhile to the tinkle-tinkling till presently the burden changed to a

over and over, till I said to myself, "These are the Singing Waters the poets hear!" So I tiptoed nearer through the crackling leaves, and touching the rose-vines very deftly for fear of thorns, again I listened. My heart beat faster.

"It is an English linn!" I said, astonished, for there were words to it, English words to that singing rivulet! I could make out "gold" and "rue" and "youth."

"Some woodland secret!" I told myself; so I listened eagerly, scarcely breathing, and little by little, as my ears grew more accustomed to the sounds, I heard the song, not once, but often, each time more clearly than before:

It seemed familiar, yet I could not place the song, till at last it came to me that Dr. Primrose wrote it for his only child, a kind of lullaby which he used to chant to her.

Then I remembered how all that while I had been listening with my eyes shut, and so I opened them to find the singer—and saw Letitia with Robin sleeping in her arms.