You_ could take a few tucks!" Her astonished face showed in the glass
above his shoulder.

"Oh, I'm not too bad with a needle. Did you note those neat patches on
my breeches--?"

"I noted nothing about those breeches; they went straight into the fire!
Such rags...."

"Miss Merry, ma'am--" small Hetty showed an eager face around the corner
of the door--"Majuh Forbes and Missus Forbes--they's downstairs."

Drew faced away from the mirror. "Why?" he demanded with almost hostile
emphasis.

Meredith Barrett untied the strings of her sewing apron. "Hetty, tell
Mam Gusta to set out some of the English biscuits and make tea." Then
she turned back to face Drew. "Why, Drew? Rather--why not? They're your
kin, and I think that Marianna feels it deeply that you came here and
not to Red Springs. Not to go home...."

"Home?" There was heat in that. "You, if anyone, know that Red Springs
was never really my home. And Forbes is an officer in the Union Army.
This is no time for a Reb to camp out in his house. My grandfather
wanted the place to be just Aunt Marianna's, didn't he?" He paused by
the chest of drawers, his hand going out to the spurs, the gold cord.
Three years--in a way a small lifetime--all to be summed up now by a
slightly tarnished cord from a general's hat, a pair of spurs a young
Texan had jauntily worn.

But it _was_ a lifetime. He was not a boy any more, to have to endure
his elders making decisions for him. His future was his own, and he had
earned the right to that. Drew did not know that his face had hardened,
that he suddenly looked a stranger to the woman who was watching him
with concern.

"Please, Drew, you mustn't allow yourself to be so bitter--"

"Bitter? About Red Springs, you mean? Lord, I never wanted the place. I
hate every brick of it, and I think I always have. But I don't hate
Forbes or Aunt Marianna if that's what you're afraid of. It's just that
I have no place there any more."

Her mouth tightened. "But you have! You owe it to Marianna to listen to
her now. This is important, Drew, more important than you can guess. No,
Boyd--" her gesture checked her son as he arose from the chair--"this is
none of your affair. Come with me, Drew!"

He picked up a borrowed coat, also much too wide for him, pulled it on
over the bunchiness of his shirt, and followed her, swallowing what he
knew to be a useless protest.

The parlor was as bright with sun as the upper room had been. As Drew
entered a