So the evening came when Conrad sat in Mowbray Lodge looking forward to the morrow and the arrival of the train due at twelve fifteen. And he looked forward with more eagerness because the evening--strange to say--was rather melancholy, and the knowledge that he was going to bed in the room where he had slept as a boy induced a mood totally different from the mood he had expected of it. He did not feel a boy as he sat in the silent house, by a bad light, listening to the rain patter on the shrubs. On the contrary he felt increasingly old and increasingly mournful while the long evening wore away. The dreary lamps depressed him, and the sad tick of the clock, and the ceaseless dripping of the rain sent him to the whisky-bottle. After breakfast next day he bought lamps--several of them--with duplex burners. The roads were a little sloppy, but the sky was blue. He was gratified to reflect that his cousins were doubtless blinking in a black fog; the permanent pleasure of wintering in the country is the thought of how unhappy our friends must be in town. In the forlornest watering-places of the south coast you may notice, on a fine November morning, people folding newspapers briskly, and looking heavenward with a twinkle in their eyes. They are all returning thanks for the sufferings of their friends in London. The train due at twelve fifteen wound into view at twelve thirty-five. They were there! Nina, alert, a smile on her thin, shrewd face; Regina, with an air of having travelled under protest; Ted, bowed beneath the weight of the Law Courts. "So you've come!" "At last! What a loathsome line!" "Who's looking after the luggage? Is there a cab to be had?" "Well, of course. Do you suppose it's a village?" "How hot it is! You must be smothered in those furs, dear?" This to Nina from 'Gina. 'Gina was always expensively clothed, and badly dressed, but she couldn't vie with the Regent's Park sables. "You must be half dead," she insisted compassionately; "it's as warm as the Riviera." "We boast of it in our advertisements," said Conrad, "but it isn't. How did you leave Toto and the family?" He heard that it was a fine day in town too, and secretly resented the fact. The party drove away, another "fly" rumbling with the baggage in their wake. "The lane!" he exclaimed as he sprang out. "And it's the same as ever." "I don't remember it a bit," said all three, gazing about them vaguely. "The garden!" he displayed it in triumph. "I fancied it was quite big," said Nina. "Funny how wee children's eyes exaggerate, isn't it?" But she had not really been so wee as all that. "The hall, where Boultbee was always ragging us because we didn't wipe our shoes!" He had thrown the door open before the maid could run upstairs. "Who was Boultbee?" asked Regina. "What a memory you have!"