Thomas, however, was reaching up a hand, and there was nothing but hearty greeting in his face. He kept saying, “You’ve landed, dad—you’ve landed at last!” as if it was something brought about by a charm. He managed to spare Bob a jerk of the head, and then instantly turned to the older man again. Bob looked at them both with a somewhat curious stare—the brother that seemed so hearty and so glad, and the father that was out of himself to-night. Kit said, “Ay, ay,” in a voice that was rather vague and tired, because now he was looking past Thomas at the gate. He had not noticed the gate when they first stopped, because of that withering picture of Thomas in his strength, but now he saw that it was not the gate he knew. It was either a new gate straight from the Hall works, or else it was the old one mended and put to rights. It was painted, too, which in any case would have made it strange, because it was many a long year since Kit had painted his gates. Perhaps he should have welcomed this first symbol of advance, but instead he felt coldly angry with the four-ruled thing, swinging so neatly on its stoup. He was accustomed to broken and jagged and hanging bars, made lovely in velvet greens by the brushes of wind and rain. Always, on coming home, he had seen the house through the bars, the painted colours of home through the ancient, mellow frame. Sunset he had seen through the old bars—long lines of yellow in a frosty sky, and the red ball of the sun dropping fierily over snow. He had seen pure morning and sepia afternoon, and the wild smokes of stormy dusks in spring, and the old gate had vignetted them softly, as the soft lines of the hedges framed the fields. But it was not possible to look at the house through this soulless square, cutting the scene like a knife with its hard blue lines. Now there came to him, as on the yacht, the sense of violent robbery at a journey’s end. Just here he had meant to stand and stare, to yield to the first ecstasy of sight, and this parvenu gate had come brutally between. He glared at it so fiercely that Thomas asked what was wrong, but Kit only said, “Nowt, nowt,” and allowed him to help him down. Bob looked at him from beside the horse’s head, watching with curious, half-shut eyes. Thomas did not appear to notice that the other two scarcely spoke. He was so busy with his welcome, so full of a rather nervous pleasure and intense relief. He talked all the time he was helping the old man down, and after he had him safely on the ground. “You’ll be a bit stiff, likely, but you’re rarely lish.... Watch out for yon step, now—ay, yon’s it! You’ve brought fiddle along wi’ you?—ay, there it be. Catch hold of my arm, and we’ll get along to t’house.”