He had a proud look and a-- Come down
again, thou little naughty man, and I will tell thee what the Lord
Cardinal had under his crimson sash. 'Tis not a thing to shout to the
tree-tops. I might have to recite ten Paternosters, if I let thee
tempt me so to do. For whispering it in thine ear, I should but say
one; for having remarked it, none at all. Facts are facts; and, even
in the case of so weighty a fact, the responsibility rests not upon the
beholder."
Mary Antony leaned over the parapet, looking upward. The afternoon
sunlight fell full upon the russet parchment of her kind old face,
shewing the web of wrinkles spun by ninety years of the gently turning
wheel of time.
But the robin, perched upon the bough, trilled and sang, unmoved. He
was weary of tales of bakers and piemen. He was not at all curious as
to what had been beneath the French Cardinal's crimson sash. He wanted
the tasty morsels which he knew lay concealed in Sister Mary Antony's
leathern wallet. So he stayed on the bough and sang.
The old face, peering up from between the pillars, softened into
tenderness at the robin's song.
"I cannot let thy little grace return unto thee void," she said, and
fumbled at the fastenings of her wallet.
A flick of wings, a flash of red. The robin had dropped from the
bough, and perched beside her.
She doled out crumbs, and fragments of cheese, pushing them toward him
along the parapet; leaving her fingers near, to see how close he would
adventure to her hand.
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