wo
flitted together over all their country, from the brushwood-pile up the
Thirty-Mile Ride, till they saw the House of the Sick Thing, a pin-point
in the distance to the left; stamped through the Railway Waiting-room
where the roses lay on the spread breakfast-tables; and returned, by the
ford and the city they had once burned for sport, to the great swells
of the downs under the lamp-post. Wherever they moved a strong singing
followed them underground, but this night there was no panic. All the
land was empty except for themselves, and at the last (they were sitting
by the lamp-post hand in hand) she turned and kissed him. He woke with a
start, staring at the waving curtain of the cabin door; he could almost
have sworn that the kiss was real.

Next morning the ship was rolling in a Biscay sea, and people were not
happy; but as Georgie came to breakfast, shaven, tubbed, and smelling of
soap, several turned to look at him because of the light in his eyes and
the splendour of his countenance.

"Well, you look beastly fit," snapped a neighbour. "Any one left you a
legacy in the middle of the Bay?"

Georgie reached for the curry, with a seraphic grin. "I suppose it's
the gettin' so near home, and all that. I do feel rather festive this
mornin. 'Rolls a bit, doesn't she?"

Mrs. Zuleika stayed in her cabin till the end of the voyage, when
she left without bidding him farewell, and wept passionately on the
dock-head for pure joy of meeting her children, who, she had often said,
were so like their father.

Georgie headed for his own country, wild with delight of his first long
furlough after the lean seasons. Nothing was changed in that orderly
life, from the coachman who met him at the station to the white peacock
that stormed at the carriage from the stone wall above the shaven lawns.
The house took toll of him with due regard to precedence--first the
mother; then the father; then the housekeeper, who wept and praised God;
then the butler, and so on down to the under-keeper, who had been dogboy
in Georgie's youth, and called him "Master Georgie," and was reproved by
the groom who had taught Georgie to ride.

"Not a thing changed," he sighed contentedly, when the three of them sat
down to dinner in the late sunlight, while the rabbits crept out upon
the lawn below the cedars, and the big trout in the ponds by the home
paddock rose for their evening meal.

"Our changes are all over, dear," cooed the mother; "and now I