You see he was connected with the staff, and had to return to Bombay with the major portion of the expeditionary army; and there he was detained, arranging this thing and that, until it was waxing late in the summer, when he gazed on the Sunderbunds behind him; late in the summer when he beheld again the donkey boys of Cairo; still latter when he steamed down the Mediterranean and past "The Rock," and up the Bay of Biscay, and landed at Southampton; but he came at last, although the month of August had again come round ere Tom set foot on British soil, and revisited his native place. The dowager had been "picking up," as Doctor Jolly said, all this time; and although she could not walk about--one of her sides was paralysed still--yet she was very cheerful, and could speak fluently enough. Lizzie was in the room--the parlour where his mother had told him "Fiddle-de-dee!" when he told his love--with her when he came home--and you may guess the meeting between the three. How the mother sobbed over her darling boy; how she grieved over the change in him; how Lizzie's face wore little tell-tale blushes when he spoke to her; and how he, too, blushed, when his mother called out to him, when he was going to shake hands with her politely-- "Why don't you kiss her, Tom? You know you would, you scamp, if I were not here." But the old lady would not let him out of her sight; and although Tom was dying to have more explanation with Lizzie, he had to wait for a chance. When Lizzie rose to go it was late in the afternoon, a bright August afternoon. Tom told her he wanted to speak to her, as she was going to the door, and asked her if he might come down to the parsonage. "He wanted to see Pringle:" he was actually dying to see the young incumbent. And Lizzie, with a still more tell-tale blush, and a sudden casting down of the pretty violet eyes, and a resting of the long black lashes on her cheek, had murmured to him-- "Come!" Later on, when the mother and son had had still quieter conversation, and Tom got away, he bent his steps towards the parsonage, his mother wishing him "God speed" on his errand. What on earth could that errand be? Fortunately, not only was the old campaigner away for the day--she had taken to visiting and bullying the young incumbent's sick parishioners for him now, and priming them with tracts when a cheerful word would have better suited their ailments; but Pringle was also out with his wife, and Tom found Lizzie alone at home--alone in a very little conservatory, which had witnessed his love-tale before, and where he had parted from her, telling her that she was a heartless jilt.