"Jefferson's shirt has long enough sleeves, but all these billows!" Cousin Merry's tongue clicked against her teeth in exasperation. Her hand was in the middle of Drew's back, gathering up a good pleating of linen, but he still had extra folds of cloth to spare over his ribs. Four days of rest and plenty of food was not sufficient to restore any padding to his frame. "You certainly grew one way, but not the other!"
Boyd, established in the big chair by the window, laughed.
"I could take a few tucks," Drew offered.
"You could take a few tucks!" Her astonished face showed in the glass above his shoulder.
"Oh, I'm not too bad with a needle. Did you note those neat patches on my breeches—?"
"I noted nothing about those breeches; they went straight into the fire! Such rags...."
"Miss Merry, ma'am—" small Hetty showed an eager face around the corner of the door—"Majuh Forbes and Missus Forbes—they's downstairs."
Drew faced away from the mirror. "Why?" he demanded with almost hostile emphasis.
Meredith Barrett untied the strings of her sewing apron. "Hetty, tell Mam Gusta to set out some of the English biscuits and make tea." Then she turned back to face Drew. "Why, Drew? Rather—why not? They're your kin, and I think that Marianna feels it deeply that you came here and not to Red Springs. Not to go home...."
"Home?" There was heat in that. "You, if anyone, know that Red Springs was never really my home. And Forbes is an officer in the Union Army. This is no time for a Reb to camp out in his house. My grandfather wanted the place to be just Aunt Marianna's, didn't he?" He paused by the chest of drawers, his hand going out to the spurs, the gold cord. Three years—in a way a small lifetime—all to be summed up now by a slightly tarnished cord from a general's hat, a pair of spurs a young Texan had jauntily worn.