“You came here often—did you not, dear?”
“Yes,” said Lucina, “but that once in particular, Aunt Camilla?”
“I fear I do not remember, dear,” said Camilla, whose past had been for years a peaceful monotone as to her own emotions, and had so established a similar monotone of memory.
“Don't you remember, Aunt Camilla? I came first with a stent to knit on a garter, and we sat out here. Then the yellow cats came, and father had been fishing, and he brought some speckled trout, and—then—the Edwards boy—”
“Oh, the little boy I had to weed my garden! A good little boy,” Camilla said.
Lucina winced a little. She did not quite like Jerome to be spoken of in that mildly reminiscent way. “He's grown up now, you know, Aunt Camilla,” said she.
“Yes, my dear, and he is as good a young man as he was a boy, I hear.”
“Father speaks very highly of him,” said Lucina, with a soft tremor and mounting of color, to which her aunt responded sensitively.
People said that Camilla Merritt had never had a lover, but the same wind can strike the same face of the heart.
“I have heard him very highly spoken of,” she agreed; and there was a betraying quiver in her voice also.