Lucina was glad that it was all so like what it had been, even to the yellow cats, seeming scarcely more than a second rendering of a tune, and it made it possible for her to open truthfully and easily upon her plan. She herself, whose mind was so changed from its old childish habit of simple outlook and waiting into personal effort for its own ends, and whose body was so advanced in growth of grace, was perhaps the most altered of all. However, there was much of the child left in her. "Aunt Camilla," said she, in almost the same tone of timid deprecation which the little Lucina of years before might have used. Camilla looked up, with gentle inquiry, from her portfolio. "I have been thinking," said Lucina, bending low over her embroidery that her aunt might not see the pink confusion of her face, which she could not, after all, control, "how I came here and spent the afternoon, once, years ago; do you remember?" "You came here often--did you not, dear?" "Yes," said Lucina, "but that once in particular, Aunt Camilla?" "I fear I do not remember, dear," said Camilla, whose past had been for years a peaceful monotone as to her own emotions, and had so established a similar monotone of memory. "Don't you remember, Aunt Camilla? I came first with a stent to knit on a garter, and we sat out here. Then the yellow cats came, and father had been fishing, and he brought some speckled trout, and--then--the Edwards boy--" "Oh, the little boy I had to weed my garden! A good little boy," Camilla said. Lucina winced a little. She did not quite like Jerome to be spoken of in that mildly reminiscent way. "He's grown up now, you know, Aunt Camilla," said she. "Yes, my dear, and he is as good a young man as he was a boy, I hear." "Father speaks very highly of him," said Lucina, with a soft tremor and mounting of color, to which her aunt responded sensitively. People said that Camilla Merritt had never had a lover, but the same wind can strike the same face of the heart. "I have heard him very highly spoken of," she agreed; and there was a betraying quiver in her voice also. "We had plum-cake, and tea in the pink cups--don't you remember, Aunt Camilla?" "So many times we had them--did we not, dear?" "Yes, but that one time?" "I fear that I cannot distinguish that time from the others, dear." There was a pause. Lucina took a few more stitches on her embroidery. Miss Camilla poised her gold pencil reflectively over her portfolio. "Aunt Camilla," said Lucina then. "Well, dear?" "I have been thinking how pleasant it would be to have another little tea-party, here in the arbor; would you have any objections?" "My dear Lucina!" cried Miss Camilla, and looked at her niece with gentle delight at the suggestion.