Part 3 (2/2)
”No. I'll stay with uncle and aunt,” said Helen hesitatingly.
”Seventeenth cousins from America don't appear often,” Phil put in, perhaps a bit luke-warmly.
Helen shook her head.
”Oh, please, that's a good mouse!” urged Heinriette.
”No!” said Helen, a sharpness in her voice unlike Heinriette's now and a flash of what seemed pent-up irritation in her eyes.
It was not an agreeable exhibition, Phil thought. But Henriette smiled as if accustomed to such outbreaks, explaining in an aside:
”Train-riding always tires her. You mustn't mind her abruptness. She has more fire, is more French, than I am.”
They had gone only a few steps when Helen ran after them. She was flushed, with a singular, penitent look in her eyes, and the voice of Henriette might have been continuing softly as she said:
”Please, I didn't mean to be tempery. But I had planned to do something and I'll arrange the flowers for the table.”
”You are always together, quite inseparable, you and Helen,” said Phil, after they were through the gate.
”Yes. Isn't it lucky to have a sister only a year apart from you?”
said Henriette. ”We're quite different, but surely you've noted the resemblance in our voices. I have tried to change mine and she has tried to change hers, for there was something uncanny about it, but neither of us could quite. It's been a greater cross to mother than to us, though I can't see, why when we are so different in other ways, can you?”
He could not when Henriette's wonderful eyes were putting the question to him at the same time as her lips, in a way that made the difference a contrast.
”I'll show you my favourite walk,” she said.
It took them into a lane and on high ground, where the village lay nestling at their feet, a greyish patch in the pattern-work of hedges.
The beauty of the landscape to him was in its suggestion, no less than in its appeal to the eye. Many generations of men had laid their bones in this earth after having given it their strength in return for life.
”I understand how that first Sanford who went across the water on that adventure which took rare courage in those days,” said Phil, ”harked back to this scene which was bred in his blood, and how other scenes in other climates became bred in the blood of his grandsons.”
”It is much as our ancestors saw it, I fancy,” Henriette said. ”I'm bred into it somewhat, but more into France.”
”A little into America, too,” he suggested. ”You have some American blood.”
She was thoughtful for a moment, then looked up at him brightly.
”Perhaps. Why not? Though I've never been to America. There is a walk in the neighbourhood of our chateau at Mervaux which I should like to show you. I'm fonder of it than of this, I confess.”
”And I've a favourite walk I should like to show you in the Berks.h.i.+res,” he said.
”A seventeenth cousin reunion in walks, is that it?” She was smiling at her own suggestion with a confidential nod.
”Bully!”
”No, you should say ripping in England. Bully is an American vulgarism, Cousin Phil.”
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