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"Well, I have and I haven't," said Robin. "When you are as old as I am you will despise him: and when I am twenty years older I shall read him again like anything and love a lot of him as much as you do. I promise you that. I've got a nasty bit of ground to get over--disillusionment and so on--but I'll meet you again on the other side."

Robin was talking half to himself, finding Anne as he often had in the past years a help to self-examination. Sometimes he told himself that he was a selfish beast to use that Fielding child (for as such his lofty twenty-six years looked on her) as a safety-valve. But having thus made confession to himself he considered the account squared and again made her the occasional awestruck recipient of his reflections on life.

"Well, I must go and see about a parcel from Barchester that hasn't turned up," said Robin. "Are you coming down?"

"Not your side," said Anne. "I'm meeting mummy and daddy's train."

"Goodbye then till this evening," said Robin and went downstairs again towards the parcels office.