To Alf their return to Hackney brought nothing but relief. His brief spurt of passion for Isobel had been swallowed up in his joy at finding himself once more free to live his own life, no longer the helpless puppet of Fate in a station and a way of existence to which he had felt himself a shrinking stranger. Isobel herself was now more than ever the figure of a dream. In fact, all the events of that strange time seemed to him hazy and unreal, until their reality was brought home to him in an unexpected and startling manner. Alf had imagined that the Denmore Manor chapter of his life was definitely and forever closed when he reached Waterloo on the night of his flight. He had at once started to grow his mustache again, and already a bristly growth was doing its best to eliminate the last traces of Alfred Wentworth, Esquire. But Alfred Wentworth had been too important a personage in his short career for the world to accept so lightly his disappearance. The papers had taken up the affair, and the fuss they made of it both surprised and alarmed Alf. To make matters worse, Mr. Higgins senior--who might be described politically as being a half-baked semi-socialist--had regarded the whole affair as being in some obscure way a device of Capital to defraud Labor, and had talked of nothing else for some days, until Alf's irritation came to a head in regrettable outbursts of temper. Bill entered the house on this occasion to find Alf's father reading aloud from an evening paper and making fierce marginal comments thereon for the benefit of his wife and son. The former--a stout lady of placid appearance--was lulling herself peacefully to sleep in a rocking-chair, soothed by her husband's voice as much as by the motion. Alf was sitting hunched up in a rickety basket-chair, sucking at an empty pipe. "'Ullo!" said Alf, not very graciously. "'Ullo!" returned Bill, as sourly as he. Mr. Higgins senior, however, was pleased at the prospect of obtaining an addition to his audience and welcomed his visitor more effusively. "'Ullo, Grant," he said. "Come and sit down. Wodjer think o' this?" He smote the paper in his hand. "The country's goin' to ruin under this 'ere gover'mint. Fair makes yer blood boil." "What does?" asked Bill politely but without interest. Old Higgins' blood had a habit of boiling on the smallest provocation. "The 'ole bloomin' business. 'Ere you an Alf 'ere come back on leave to this country, an' what do you find?" He paused dramatically. His audience gazed at the fireplace with complete apathy--except Mrs. Higgins, who emitted a slight snore and dropped her head upon her ample bosom. "What do you find, I say?" reiterated her husband. "Well, what?" Alf asked when the pause had grown too painful to be borne any longer.