." A glance
shows me all this.

"Papoe!" says my father, and I hear the fall of a book, "I can't read
a line. He is coming to-morrow,--to-morrow! If we lived to the age of
Methuselah, Kitty, we could never reconcile philosophy and man; that is,
if the poor man's to be plagued with a good, affectionate son!"

And my father gets up and walks to and fro. One minute more, father, one
minute more, and I am on thy breast! Time, too, has dealt gently with
thee, as he doth with those for whom the wild passions and keen cares
of the world never sharpen his scythe. The broad front looks more broad,
for the locks are more scanty and thin, but still not a furrow. Whence
comes that short sigh?

"What is really the time, Blanche? Did you look at the turret-clock?
Well, just go and look again."

"Kitty," quoth my father, "you have not only asked what time it is
thrice within the last ten minutes, but you have got my watch, and
Roland's great chronometer, and the Dutch clock out of the kitchen,
all before you, and they all concur in the same tale,--to-day is not
to-morrow."

"They are all wrong, I know," said my mother, with mild firmness; "and
they've never gone right since he left." Now out comes a letter, for I
hear the rustle, and then a step glides towards the lamp, and the dear,
gentle, womanly face--fair still, fair ever for me, fair as when it bent
over my pillow in childhood's first sickness, or when we threw flowers
at each other on the lawn at sunny noon! And now Blanche is whispering;
and now the flutter, the start, the cry,--"It is true! it is true! Your
arms, mother. Close, close round my necks as in the old time. Father!
Roland too! Oh, joy! joy! joy! home again,--home till death!"

CHAPTER V.

From a dream of the Bushland, howling dingoes,(1) and the war-whoop of
the wild men, I wake and see the sun shining in through the jasmine
that Blanche herself has had trained round the window; old school-books
neatly ranged round the wall; fishing-rods, cricket-bats, foils, and
the old-fashioned gun; and my mother seated by the bed-side; and Juba
whining and scratching to get up. Had I taken thy murmured blessing, my
mother, for the whoop of the blacks, and Juba's low whine for the howl
of the dingoes?

Then what days of calm, exquisite delight,--the interchange of heart
with heart; what walks with Roland, and tales of him once our shame,
now our pride; and the art with which the old man would lead those walks
ro