The fire was bright, and the hearth swept, and poor Netta and Minette
were neat and clean.
'Uncle, what have you done with the geranium?' suddenly asked Minette.
'I left it at home, dear.'
'How cross of you, uncle, to let the pretty flower die.'
'I put it in water, Minette, because it came from Glanyravon, where your
mother and I were born, and where your grandfather and grandmother
live.'
'I don't like grandmamma, uncle, she was so fat, and talked so
strangely.'
'You should not say that; but you have another grandmother whom you have
never seen.'
'Shall we go to her, mammy dear? and will you come, Uncle Rowland? and
shall the kind lady come, and Gladys? and then we can gather those
pretty flowers. I saw them growing once at the Crystal Palace, and they
would not let me pick them.'
Netta forgot her grief, Rowland his sermon, Miss Gwynne her dignity, in
talking to Minette of Glanyravon and its inhabitants; and, by degrees,
they fell into a conversation upon old friends and old times, that ended
in the days when they played together as children in the garden at the
vicarage, whilst the squire and his lady were paying their periodical
visits to the vicar and his lady.
Unconsciously it oozed out how every incident of those childish games
was remembered and treasured up by Rowland, as well as the meetings of a
more advanced age, when, as a Rugby boy, he tried to make himself
agreeable to the young heiress, who bestowed no thought on him.
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