At the end of the beech avenue she saw the house; the three big,

sharp-pointed gables of the front: the little gable underneath in the

middle, jutting out over the porch. That was the bay of Aunt Adeline's

bed-room. She used to lean out of the lattice windows and call to the

children in the garden. The house was the same.

So were the green terraces and the wide, flat-topped yew walls, and the

great peacocks carved out of the yew; and beyond them the lawn, flowing

out under banks of clipped yew down to the goldfish pond. They were

things that she had seen again and again in sleep and memory; things

that had made her heart ache thinking of them; that took her back and

back, and wouldn't let her be. She had only to leave off what she was

doing and she saw them; they swam before her eyes, covering the Swiss

mountains, the flat Essex fields, the high white London houses. They

waited for her at the waking end of dreams.

She had found them again.

A gap in the green walls led into the flower garden, and there, down the

path between tall rows of phlox and larkspurs and anchusa, of blue

heaped on blue, Aunt Adeline came holding up a tall bunch of flowers,

blue on her white gown, blue on her own milk-white and blue. She came,

looking like a beautiful girl; the same, the same; Anne had seen her in

dreams, walking like that, tall among the tall flowers.

She never hurried to meet you; hurrying would have spoiled the beauty of

her movement; she came slowly, absent-mindedly, stopping now and then to

pluck yet another of the blue spires. Robert stood still in the path to

watch her. She was smiling a long way off, intensely aware of him.

"Is _that_ Anne?" she said.

"Yes, Auntie, _really_ Anne."

"Well, you _are_ a big girl, aren't you?"

She kissed her three times and smiled, looking away again over her

flower-beds. That was the difference between Aunt Adeline and Uncle

Robert. His eyes made you important; they held you all the time he

talked to you; when he smiled, it was for you altogether and not for

himself at all. Her eyes never looked at you long; her smile wandered,

it was half for you and half for herself, for something she was thinking

of that wasn't you.

"What have you done with your father?" she said.

"I was to tell you. Daddy's ever so sorry; but he can't come till

to-morrow. A horrid man kept him on business."

"Oh?" A little crisping wave went over Aunt Adeline's face, a wave of

vexation. Anne saw it.

"He is _really_ sorry. You should have heard him damning and cursing."




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