Audrey went on with her breakfast. It was so inexpressibly droll to see Percival in the character of the proud father, but Dr. Ross seemed perfectly to understand his son-in-law. Audrey's pleasure was a little damped when she found that she must not see Geraldine. She went about with her head in the air, calling herself an aggrieved aunt; and she pretended to be jealous of her mother, who had taken up her residence at Hillside during the first week.

But when the day came for Audrey to be admitted to that quiet room, and she saw Geraldine looking lovelier than ever in her weakness, with a dark, downy head nestled against her arm, a great rush of tenderness filled her heart, and she felt as though she had never loved her sister so dearly.

'Will you take him, Aunt Audrey?' and Geraldine smiled at her.

'No, no! do not move him--let me see mother and son together for a moment. Oh, you two darlings, how comfortable you look!' but Audrey's tone was a trifle husky, and then she gave a little laugh: 'Actually, boy is a week old to-day, and this is the first time I have been allowed to see my nephew.'

'It did seem hard,' returned Geraldine, taking her hand; 'but mother and nurse were such tyrants--and Percival was just as bad; we were not allowed to have a will of our own, were we, baby? It was such nonsense keeping my own sister from me, as I told them.'

'Percival is very pleased with his boy, Gage;' and then a soft, satisfied look came into the young mother's eyes.

'I think it is more to him than to most men,' she whispered. 'He is not young, and he did so long for a son. Do you know, mother tells me that he nearly cried when she put baby into his arms--at least, there were tears in his eyes, and he could scarcely speak when he saw me first.

Father loves his little boy already,' she continued, addressing the unconscious infant, and after that Audrey did consent to take her nephew.

'What do you mean to call him, Gage?'

'Mother and I would have liked him to be called John, after father; but Percival wishes him so much to have his own father's name, Leonard; and of course he ought to have his way. You must be my boy's G.o.dmother, Audrey--I will have no one else; and Michael must be one G.o.dfather--Percival told me this morning that Mr. Bryce must be the other.'

'I am glad you thought of Michael,' responded Audrey rather dreamily: baby had got one of her fingers grasped in his tiny fists, and was holding it tightly; and then nurse came forward and suggested that Mrs.

Harcourt had talked enough: and, though Audrey grumbled a little, she was obliged to obey.

Audrey took advantage of the first fine afternoon to walk over to Brail.

It was more than three miles by the road, but she was a famous walker.

The lanes were still impa.s.sable on account of the thaw; February had set in with unusual mildness: the snow had melted, the little lake at Woodcote was no longer a sheet of blue ice, and Eiderdown and Snowflake were dabbling joyously with their yellow bills in the water and their soft plumes tremulous with excitement.

Audrey had set out early, and Cyril had promised to meet her half-way on her return; the days were lengthening, but he was sure the dusk would overtake her long before she got home.

Audrey was inclined to dispute this point: she liked to be independent, and to regulate her own movements. But Cyril was not to be coerced.

'I shall meet you, probably by the windmill,' he observed quietly. 'If you are not inclined for my companionship, I will promise to keep on the other side of the road.'

And of course, after this remark, Audrey was obliged to give in; and in her heart she knew she should be glad of his company.

She had not seen Mr. O'Brien for some weeks. During the winter her visits to Vineyard Cottage were always few and far between. Michael had driven her over a few days before Christmas, but she had not been there since. She had heard that Mrs. Baxter had been ailing for some weeks, and her conscience p.r.i.c.ked her that she had not made an effort to see her. She would have plenty of news to tell them, she thought: there was Michael's fortune, and Gage's baby. Last time she had told them of her engagement, and had promised to bring Cyril with her one afternoon. She had tried to arrange this more than once, but Cyril had proposed that they should wait for the spring.

Audrey enjoyed her walk, and it was still early in the afternoon when she unlatched the little gate and walked up the narrow path to the cottage. As she pa.s.sed the window she could see the ruddy gleams of firelight, and the broad back of Mr. O'Brien as he sat in his great elbow-chair in front of the fire.

Mrs. Baxter opened the door. She had a crimson handkerchief tied over her hair, and her face looked longer and paler than ever.

'Why, it is never you, Miss Ross?' she cried in a subdued crescendo.

'Whatever will father say when he knows it is you? There's a deal happened, Miss Ross, and I am in a shake still when I think of the turn he gave me only the other night. I heard the knock, and opened the door, as it might be to you, and when I saw who it was--at least----Why, father! father! what are you shoving me away for?' For Mr. O'Brien had come out of the parlour, and had taken his daughter rather unceremoniously by both shoulders, and had moved her out of his way.

'You leave that to me, Priscilla,' he said in rather a peculiar voice; and here his great hand grasped Audrey's. 'You have done a good deed, Miss Ross, in coming here this afternoon, for I am glad and proud to see you;' and then, in a voice he tried in vain to steady: 'Susan was right--she always was, bless her!--and Mat has come home!'

CHAPTER x.x.x

'I COULD NOT STAND IT ANY LONGER, TOM'

'The beautiful souls of the world have an art of saintly alchemy, by which bitterness is converted into kindness, the gall of human experience into gentleness, ingrat.i.tude into benefits, insults into pardon.'--AMIEL.

'Mat has come home!'

Audrey uttered an exclamation of surprise and pleasure as she heard this unexpected intelligence.

'Is it really true? Oh, Mr. O'Brien, I am so glad--so very glad! When did he come? Why did you not send for me? My dear old friend, how happy you must be to get him back after all these years of watching and waiting!'

A curiously sad expression crossed Mr. O'Brien's rugged face as Audrey spoke in her softest and most sympathetic voice.

'Ay, I am not denying that it is happiness to get the lad back,' he returned, in a slow, ruminative fashion, as though he found it difficult to shape his thoughts into words; 'but it is a mixed sort of happiness, too. Come in and sit down, Miss Ross--Mat has gone out for a prowl, as he calls it--and I will tell you how it all happened while Prissy sees to the tea;' and as Mrs. Baxter withdrew at this very broad hint, Mr.

O'Brien drew up one of the old-fashioned elbow-chairs to the fire, and then, seating himself, took up his pipe from the hob, and looked thoughtfully into the empty bowl. 'Things get terribly mixed in this world,' he continued, 'and pleasures mostly lose their flavour before one has a chance of enjoying them. I am thinking that the father of the Prodigal Son did not find it all such plain sailing after the feast was over, and he had time to look into things more closely. That elder brother would not be the pleasantest of companions for many a long day; he would still have a sort of grudge, like my Prissy here.'

'Oh, I hope not!'

'Oh, it is true, though. Human nature is human nature all the world over. But, there, I am teasing you with all this rigmarole; only I seem somehow confused, and as though I could not rightly arrange my thoughts.

When did Mat come home? Well, it was three nights ago, and--would you believe it, Miss Ross?--it feels more like three weeks.'

'I wish you had written to me. I would have come to you before.'

'Ay, that was what Prissy said; she was always bidding me take ink and paper. "There's Miss Ross ought to be told, father"--she was always dinning it into my ears; but somehow I could not bring myself to write.

"Where's the hurry," I said to Prissy, "when Mat is a fixture here? I would rather tell Miss Ross myself." And I have had my way, too'--with a touch of his old humour--'and here we are, talking comfortably as we have been used to do; and that is better than a stack of letters.'

Audrey smiled. Whatever her private opinion might be, she certainly offered no contradiction. If she had been in his place, all her world should have heard of her prodigal's return, and should have been bidden to eat of the fatted calf; she would have called her friends and neighbours to rejoice with her over the lost one who had found his way home. Her friend's reticence secretly alarmed her. Would Vineyard Cottage be a happier place for its new inmate?

'Yes, it is better for you and me to be talking over it quietly,' he went on; 'and I am glad Mat took that restless turn an hour ago. You see, the place is small, and he has been used to bush-life; and after he has sat a bit and smoked one or two pipes, he must just go out and dig in the garden, or take his mile or two just to stretch his muscles; but he will be back by the time Prissy has got the tea.'

'And he came back three nights ago?' observed Audrey.

'Ay. We were going upstairs, Prissy and I; the girl had been in bed for an hour. I was just smoking my last pipe over the kitchen fire, as I like to do, when we heard a knock at the door, and Prissy says to me:

'"I expect that is Joshua Ruddock, father, and Jane has been taken bad, and they cannot get the nurse in time." For Prissy is a good soul at helping any of her neighbours, and sometimes one or other of them will send for her to sit up with a sick wife or child. And then she goes to the door, while I knock the ashes out of my pipe. But the next moment she gave a sort of screech, and I made up my mind that it was that rascal Joe asking for a night's lodging--not that he would ever have slept under my roof again. I confess I swore to myself a bit softly when I heard Prissy fly out like that.

'"Father," she says again, "here is a vagrant sort of man, and he says he is Uncle Mat."

'"And she won't believe me, Tom; so you had better come and look at me yourself;" and, sure enough, I knew the lad's voice before I got a sight of his face.

'I give you my word, Miss Ross,' he continued, somewhat huskily, 'I hardly know how I got to the door, for my limbs seemed to have no power.

'"Do you think I don't know your voice, lad?" I said; and, though it was dark, I got hold of him and pulled him into the light.

'We were both of us white and shaking as we stood there, but he looked me in the face with a pitiful sort of smile.

'"I could not stand it any longer, Tom," he said; "I suppose it was home-sickness; but it would have killed me in time. I have not got a creature in the world belonging to me. Will you and Susan take me in?"

And then, with a laugh, though there were tears in his eyes: "I am precious tired of the husks, old chap."