r; but it had
fallen in with Lorne's beautiful beliefs about England, and he clung to
it for years.

The Williamses had come over the second evening following Lorne's
arrival, after tea. Rawlins had gone to the station, just to see that
the Express would make no mistake in announcing that Mr L. Murchison had
"Returned to the Paternal Roof," and the Express had announced it,
with due congratulation. Family feeling demanded that for the first
twenty-four hours he should be left to his immediate circle, but people
had been dropping in all the next day at the office, and now came the
Williamses "trapesing," as Mrs Murchison said, across the grass, though
she was too content to make it more than a private grievance, to where
they all sat on the verandah.

"What I don't understand," Horace Williams said to Mr Murchison, "was
why you didn't give him a blow on the whistle. You and Milburn and a few
others might have got up quite a toot. You don't get the secretary to a
deputation for tying up the Empire home every day."

"You did that for him in the Express," said John Murchison, smiling as
he pressed down, with an accustomed thumb, the tobacco into his pipe.

"Oh, we said nothing at all! Wait till he's returned for South Fox,"
Williams responded jocularly.

"Why not the Imperial Council--of the future--at Westminster while
you're about it?" remarked Lorne, flipping a pebble back upon the gravel
path.

"That will keep, my son. But one of these days, you mark my words, Mr
L. Murchison will travel to Elgin Station with flags on his engine and
he'll be very much surprised to find the band there, and a large number
of his fellow-citizens, all able-bodied shouting men, and every factory
whistle in Elgin let off at once, to say nothing of kids with tin ones.
And if the Murchison Stove and Furnace Works siren stands out of that
occasion I'll break in and pull it myself."

"It won't stand out," Stella assured him. "I'll attend to it. Don't you
worry."

"I suppose you had a lovely time, Mr Murchison?" said Mrs Williams,
gently tilting to and fro in a rocking-chair, with her pretty feet
in their American shoes well in evidence. It is a fact, or perhaps
a parable, that should be interesting to political economists, the
adaptability of Canadian feet to American shoes; but fortunately it is
not our present business. Though I must add that the "rocker" was also
American; and the hammock in which Stella reposed came from New York;