Robin, all unaware of his mother's thoughts, was longing to ask her to
go to Baker's and take him with her as a first step towards the
acquaintance after which his soul thirsted, but he refrained for
various discreet reasons based on an intimate knowledge of his
mother's character; and he spent the evening perfecting a plan that
should introduce him into the interior of Baker's without her help.
The plan was of a barbarous simplicity: he was going to choose an
umbrella from the collection that years had brought together in the
stand in the hall, and go boldly and ask the man Neumann if he had
dropped it in the churchyard. The man Neumann would repudiate the
umbrella, perhaps with secret indignation, but he would be forced to
pretend he was grateful, and who knew what luck might not do for him
after that?
While Robin was plotting, and his mother was plotting, that the next
day would certainly see them inside Baker's, a third person was trying
to do exactly the same thing at Symford Hall; and this third person
was no other than Augustus, the hope of all the Shuttleworths.
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