She was sitting in her old place by the window late one afternoon and he had been reading some poems to her—a volume lately come from England.
"Cousin Chilian," she said, "will you tell me what true relation we are?"
"Why, what has put that in your head?"
"I want to know." She said it persuasively.
"Well, it isn't very near after all. My father and yours were cousins. My father was the son of the oldest brother, your father the son of the youngest, that stretched them quite far apart. When I wasn't much more than a baby Anthony came to live with us, and was like an elder brother to me. Father was very fond of him. But he would go to sea and he made a fine sailor and captain. Then he was married from here, and you were born here."
"The girls sometimes say, 'your uncle.' I wonder if you would like to have me call you uncle?"
Something in him protested. He could not tell what it was, unless an odd feeling that it made him seem older. He wished he were ten years younger, and he could give no reason for that either.
"I think I like the 'cousin' best;" after some deliberation.
"And it is so lovely to be dear to some one, very dear. I like Rachel, she's been almost a mother to me, and I like Cousin Eunice for her sweet ways. But I've no one of my very own, and so—I'm very glad to be dear to you. It is like a ship being anchored to something safe and strong."
She came and put her arms about his neck and kissed him. He drew her down on his knee. She was her mother's child, and her mother had been dear to him, his first love, his only love so far.