Cousin Phillis | Page 8

a child not so long
ago. Well, to be sure, it is five-and-twenty years ago. And what brings
you into these parts?'
She sate down herself, as if oppressed by her curiosity as to all the
five-and-twenty years that had passed by since she had seen my mother.
Her daughter Phillis took up her knitting--a long grey worsted man's
stocking, I remember--and knitted away without looking at her work. I
felt that the steady gaze of those deep grey eyes was upon me, though
once, when I stealthily raised mine to hers, she was examining
something on the wall above my head.
When I had answered all my cousin Holman's questions, she heaved a
long breath, and said, 'To think of Margaret Moneypenny's boy being in
our house! I wish the minister was here. Phillis, in what field is thy
father to-day?'
'In the five-acre; they are beginning to cut the corn.'
'He'll not like being sent for, then, else I should have liked you to have
seen the minister. But the five-acre is a good step off. You shall have a
glass of wine and a bit of cake before you stir from this house, though.
You're bound to go, you say, or else the minister comes in mostly when
the men have their four o'clock.'

'I must go--I ought to have been off before now.'
'Here, then, Phillis, take the keys.' She gave her daughter some
whispered directions, and Phillis left the room.
'She is my cousin, is she not?' I asked. I knew she was, but somehow I
wanted to talk of her, and did not know how to begin.
'Yes--Phillis Holman. She is our only child--now.'
Either from that 'now', or from a strange momentary wistfulness in her
eyes, I knew that there had been more children, who were now dead.
'How old is cousin Phillis?' said I, scarcely venturing on the new name,
it seemed too prettily familiar for me to call her by it; but cousin
Holman took no notice of it, answering straight to the purpose.
'Seventeen last May-day; but the minister does not like to hear me
calling it May-day,' said she, checking herself with a little awe. 'Phillis
was seventeen on the first day of May last,' she repeated in an emended
edition.
'And I am nineteen in another month,' thought I, to myself; I don't know
why. Then Phillis came in, carrying a tray with wine and cake upon it.
'We keep a house-servant,' said cousin Holman, 'but it is churning day,
and she is busy.' It was meant as a little proud apology for her
daughter's being the handmaiden.
'I like doing it, mother,' said Phillis, in her grave, full voice.
I felt as if I were somebody in the Old Testament--who, I could not
recollect--being served and waited upon by the daughter of the host.
Was I like Abraham's servant, when Rebekah gave him to drink at the
well? I thought Isaac had not gone the pleasantest way to work in
winning him a wife. But Phillis never thought about such things. She
was a stately, gracious young woman, in the dress and with the
simplicity of a child.

As I had been taught, I drank to the health of my newfound cousin and
her husband; and then I ventured to name my cousin Phillis with a little
bow of my head towards her; but I was too awkward to look and see
how she took my compliment. 'I must go now,' said I, rising.
Neither of the women had thought of sharing in the wine; cousin
Holman had broken a bit of cake for form's sake.
'I wish the minister had been within,' said his wife, rising too. Secretly I
was very glad he was not. I did not take kindly to ministers in those
days, and I thought he must be a particular kind of man, by his
objecting to the term May-day. But before I went, cousin Holman made
me promise that I would come back on the Saturday following and
spend Sunday with them; when I should see something of 'the minister'.
'Come on Friday, if you can,' were her last words as she stood at the
curate-door, shading her eyes from the sinking sun with her hand.
Inside the house sate cousin Phillis, her golden hair, her dazzling
complexion, lighting up the corner of the vine-shadowed room. She had
not risen when I bade her good-by; she had looked at me straight as she
said her tranquil words of farewell.
I found Mr Holdsworth down at the line, hard at work superintending.
As Soon as he had a pause, he said, 'Well, Manning, what are the new
cousins like? How do preaching and farming seem to get on together?
If the minister turns out to