"But this is not bad—it's not bad for two and twenty."
"Only two and twenty?"
"That's all. It looks as if he were made for immortality."
She turned to him that ardent gaze which made the hot day hotter.
"Dear Horace, you're going to do great things for him."
The worst of having a cousin who adores you is that magnificence is expected of you, regularly and as a matter of course. He was not even sure that Lucia did not credit him with power to work miracles. The idea was flattering but also somewhat inconvenient.
"I don't know about great things. I should like to do something. The question is what. He's a little unfortunate in—in his surroundings, and he's been ill, poor fellow. If one could give him a change. If one were only rich and could afford to send him abroad for a year. I had thought of asking him down to Oxford."
"And why didn't you?"
"Well, you know, one gets rather crowded up with things in term time."
Lucia looked thoughtfully at the refined, luxurious figure in the hammock. Horace was entitled to the hammock, for he had been ill. He was entitled also to the ministrations of his cousin Lucia. Lucia spent her time in planning and doing kind things, and, from the sudden luminous sweetness of her face, he gathered that something of the sort was in preparation now.