"There's a fellow in one of the boats," said Hal. "I wonder if it's a Sullivan or a Baird? He's probably been after killigs."
"The herons still live in the trees below the park," said Kitty. "Look, Lizette, by the other creek, you can see their big, untidy nests…
There's the harbour wall. It's low tide, the harbour is dry. We shall have to anchor outside and pull ashore."
"I see Molly and Robert on the quay," said Lizette, "and other people with them. The man is dressed as a clergyman. He has a long grey beard."
"It's Uncle Tom," shouted Hal. "He used to be father's best friend. And look, there's Aunt Harriet; she's waving a handkerchief."
"That must be Jinny with them," said Kitty. "Good heavens, she was six when we left. And now I suppose she's sixteen."
The paddle-steamer thrashed the water and went astern.
The anchor plunged from the bows. And across the dancing water the little boats pulled. Everyone was smiling, and kissing, and shaking hands. Uncle Tom had one hand on Hal's shoulder and the other on Kitty's.
Aunt Harriet had picked Lizette up in her arms and was holding her tight. Jinny looked from one to the other with warm brown eyes.
"God bless you all," said Uncle Tom, in his deep voice. "We are so very glad to welcome you home, so thankful and so happy."
The familiar cobbled stones, the shingle beach, the boats drawn up above the tide. Old Murphy's shop, the chandler's at the corner, the public-house across the square. It was market-day, and the stalls were being put away. A cowman was driving the cattle up the hill. Men stood about the square with straws in their mouths, staring and doing nothing, as they had always done. A woman was scolding a neighbour from her doorway, and a little slatternly child ran out with his finger in his mouth. The priest stood on the step of Murphy's shop, with a cabbage under his arm. Some half-dozen miners, in their working clothes, came singing down the road from Hungry Hill.
"Why did we ever leave?" said Hal. "Why did father make us go away?" Uncle Tom smiled, and took his arm.
"Never mind about that," he said. "You're home once more." How good it was to see Uncle Tom again, and kiss Aunt Harriet's plump cheek; smell the familiar Rectory smell, of leather chairs, and ferns, and dogs; sit down to an enormous tea, and a fruit cake of Aunt Harriet's own baking.
And memories, happy ones, tumbling over each other.
"Do you still churn the butter, Aunt Harriet, and skim the cream off with a scallop shell?"
"Does Uncle Tom still ride out to Ardmore on Sundays?"
"Do you remember how we played charades after tea, and mamma pretended she could not guess the word, and knew all the time?"
"Have you forgotten the picnic on Kileen moors, and Kitty falling into the bog?"
"And the expedition to the Bule Rock?"
"And the party the garrison gave on Doon Island?" The years in London were as though they had never been. Eton and Oxford existed no longer. Adeline and Lancaster Gate were an evil dream.
Molly had remembered his wish for the tower room, and Hal looked around it that first evening home, his heart too full to speak. The Boles had never used the room, and a damp, unlived-in smell still clung about the walls. The pictures were faded, and some of them green with mould. On the top of an old cupboard was a case of birds' eggs, thick with dust. He had forgotten whom they belonged to. Was it his grandfather, who had won the silver cup for greyhounds? He took them down and cleared away the dust. There were bits and pieces of an old fishing-rod too. Too broken to be of any use.
He was glad the Boles had done nothing with this room. It was intimate, personal, belonging only to the family. Home was the same, unchanged, but a little shabbier, a little more worn. Some of the carpets were threadbare. The curtains in the dining-room were falling to bits. The servants that Molly had brought with her from Robert's home said that the kitchen range was almost useless, and the pump in the stable-yard was broken.
"But what does it matter?" said Molly at dinner. "We're home again, and if the turkey has to be roasted in front of the dining-room fire on Christmas Day it will taste all the better for it."
Once more the lapping of water in the creek.
Once more the full moon over Hungry Hill.
There was so much to see, so much to do, and all in a little space of time. It was queer to see none of the old horses in the stables, and the coach-house was empty because the carriage had been sent away to London many years before. Old Tim was dead. The groom that Robert had brought with him lived in Tim's old quarters over the stables. Some of the windows were broken, there was grass growing between the cobbles.
"And it used to be kept so beautifully," sighed Molly to her husband. "I remember the boy washing down the yard every morning, before the horses were groomed, and then Tim bringing the carriage round to the front door, if mamma wanted to go down into Doon-haven. Even if the Boles did not bother about the upkeep, you would think the agent would have seen everything was in order."
"Always the same story when the owner goes away," said Robert. "You can't really blame the agent, or anyone. They feel no interest is taken. What's the use, they think, in looking after a place when the man it belongs to doesn't come near it for ten years?
Never mind, Molly, we'll try to get it into-some sort of shape while we are here."
Hal and his sister went up to visit the cottages at Oakmount, and they came away silent and disheartened, because after the first flood of conversation they felt tongue-tied and out of place.
"Ah, you're the image of your mother," said Tim's widow to Kitty. "The same sweet eyes, God rest her soul." She ran on in this way for several minutes, making them feel welcomed and remembered, but then she started to bewail the times, the hardness of living, her only son and daughter both gone to America, her eyes fixed all the while on Hal.
He gave her all the loose change in his pocket, which she seized greedily, and when they had said goodbye Hal looked over his shoulder and saw her muttering to herself, her face wrinkled, different, and he knew that she had forgotten them already, his mother's memory was a trick to please them; all that mattered to Tim's widow was the loose change in her hands.
They went down to the Rectory, where Uncle Tom and Aunt Harriet soon restored them to cheerfulness.
"Ten years is a long time," said Uncle Tom, "but you must not worry about it. You've come back, and you are going to stay. What do you intend to do with yourself, Hal, when you leave Oxford?"
"Nothing," smiled Hal, "except enjoy myself and paint pictures for my friends."
Aunt Harriet shook her head.
"You've been learning bad ways, I can see that," she said. "Too much money and too little leadership. Come and help me churn the butter.
Jinny will show you how to do it."
The white-scrubbed dairy, and Aunt Harriet bustling with the pots and pans.
"Come and work for your living," she said, "instead of lounging there on the table, drinking buttermilk.
Jinny has twice your energy, for all your size."
"Women shall work, and men shall play," teased Hal, pulling Jinny's hair. "Do you remember when I tipped you out of a wheelbarrow, Jinny, and made you cry?"
"Yes, but you kissed her afterwards and said you were sorry," said Aunt Harriet.
Hal dug his finger in the bowl of yellow cream, and looked slyly at Jinny, who, with sleeves rolled up and hair pinned on top of her head, was working the handle of the churn.
"I suppose you're too old to kiss now, Jinny," he said.
"Much too old," said Jinny gravely.
"And too sensible to fall out of a wheelbarrow?"
"It depends who was wheeling it."
"Would you like me to take you round the garden and see?"