“You are a queer boy,” she said. “You have described your ancestor, Rupert Lovel, to the life. Well, child, may you too have the brave and kindly soul. Phil, after the summer, when all is decided, you are to go to a preparatory school for Eton and then to Eton itself. All the men of our house have been educated there. Afterward I suppose you must go to Oxford. Your responsibilities will be great, little man, and you must be educated to take them up properly.”
“Mother will be pleased with all this,” said Phil; “only I do wish—yes, I can’t help saying it—that my picture was the heir. Oh, Aunt Grizel, do, do look at that lovely spider!”
“I believe the boy is more interested in those wretched spiders and caterpillars than he is in all the position and wealth which lies before him,” thought Miss Griselda.
Late on that same day she said to Miss Katharine:
“Phil this morning drew a perfect picture, both mental and physical, of our ancestor, Katharine.”
“Oh,” said Miss Katharine; “I suppose he was studying the portrait. Griselda, I see plainly that you mean to give the boy the place.”
“Provided his mother can prove his descent,” answered Miss Griselda in a gentle, satisfied tone. “But of that,” she added, “I have not, of course, the smallest doubt.”
“Does it occur to you, Griselda, to remember that on the 5th of May Rachel’s and Kitty’s mother comes here to claim her children?”
“If she is alive,” said Miss Griselda. “I have my doubts on that head. We have not had a line from her all these years.”
“You told her she was not to write.”