Perhaps so. He thought the rose-garden was the world and it seemed to me
he never went out of it during the summer months. At whatsoever hour I
appeared and called him he came out of bushes but from a different point
each time. In late autumn however, one afternoon I SAW him fly to me
from over a wall dividing the enclosed garden from the open ones. I
thought he looked guilty and fluttered when he alighted near me. I think
he did not want me to know.

"You have been making the acquaintance of a young lady robin," I said to
him. "Perhaps you are already engaged to her for the next season."

He tried to persuade me that it was not true but I felt he was not
entirely frank.

After that it was plain that he had discovered that the rose-garden was
not ALL the world. He knew about the other side of the wall. But it did
not absorb him altogether. He was seldom absent when I came and he never
failed to answer my call. I talked to him often about the young lady
robin but though he showed a gentlemanly reticence on the subject I knew
quite well he loved me best. He loved my robin sounds, he loved my
whispers, his dewy dark eyes looked into mine as if he knew we two
understood strange tender things others did not.

I was only a mere tenant of the beautiful place I had had for nine years
and that winter the owner sold the estate. In December I was to go to
Montreux for a couple of months; in March I was to return to Maytham and
close it before leaving it finally. Until I left for Switzerland I saw
my robin every day. Before I went away I called him to me and told him
where I was going.