“In the five-acre; they are beginning to cut the corn.”
“He’ll not like being sent for, then, else I should have liked you to have seen the minister. But the five-acre is a good step off. You shall have a glass of wine and a bit of cake before you stir from this house, though. You’re bound to go, you say, or else the minister comes in mostly when the men have their four o“clock.”
“I must go—I ought to have been off before now.”
“Here, then, Phillis, take the keys.” She gave her daughter some whispered directions, and Phillis left the room.
“She is my cousin, is she not?” I asked. I knew she was, but somehow I wanted to talk of her, and did not know how to begin.
“Yes—Phillis Holman. She is our only child—now.”
Either from that “now”, or from a strange momentary wistfulness in her eyes, I knew that there had been more children, who were now dead.
“How old is cousin Phillis?” said I, scarcely venturing on the new name, it seemed too prettily familiar for me to call her by it; but cousin Holman took no notice of it, answering straight to the purpose.
“Seventeen last May-day; but the minister does not like to hear me calling it May-day,” said she, checking herself with a little awe. “Phillis was seventeen on the first day of May last,” she repeated in an emended edition.
“And I am nineteen in another month,” thought I, to myself; I don’t know why. Then Phillis came in, carrying a tray with wine and cake upon it.