"It does not matter.
I can write. I promised Jackson he should have them this week. Cousin Ann
has a wonderful show of anemones this year, Aunt Lucy. The square bed in
the back garden is brilliant with them. We must try them here again next
year. I don't intend to be satisfied till we have beaten Cousin Ann."
"She says the soil here doesn't suit anemones; they are fanciful
flowers," returned Miss Merivale. "Then you went to Broadhurst, Tom?"
"Yes, I just managed it. Old Mrs. Harding was there. She is failing very
fast, poor old soul. Part of the time she thought I was Cousin James, Aunt
Lucy. She wanted to know when I heard last from my sister Lydia."
Miss Merivale put her cup down with a little clatter. Her hand had begun
to tremble. "You are very much like James, Tom," she said, glancing at the
portrait that hung on the wainscoted wall just above him, "and you get
more like him every day."
It was the portrait of her only brother she was looking at. Tom and Rose
were her cousin's children, though they called her aunt. She had adopted
them when Rose was a baby and Tom a sturdy lad of five. Woodcote had been
their home ever since. Tom had grown up knowing that the estate was to be
his at Miss Merivale's death. James Merivale had died young, ten years
before his father; and Lydia, Miss Merivale's only sister, had married
against her father's wishes, and had been disowned by him.
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