And this time the guard’s whistle blew, the train jolted forward with a clatter of coupling-irons, and then glided steadily on. I waved my hand to Owen, catching a last glimpse of his bright, animated face before I settled down to the indifferent contemplation of the staler, and coarser-looking persons who shared my compartment. What I had been looking forward to for many weeks had come to pass; I was on my way home; outwardly nothing was wanting; yet not even the thought of seeing Mrs. Carroll again seemed to have power to awaken that joy I had anticipated, though she had written to ask me to spend part of my holidays with her, and I tried now to think of some scheme by which to make this part as large as possible. I looked at the people opposite; I looked out of the window; I turned the pages of _Punch’s Almanac_, which Owen had bought for me at the bookstall. Then I shut my eyes and tried to doze. When the train drew in at the station I saw my father standing on the platform. Somehow, I had not expected him to be there, and he upset my calculations. I opened the carriage door, and as I shook hands with him I realized how much easier it is to make plans than to carry them out, and hoped Mrs. Carroll herself had approached him on the matter of my going to Derryaghy. His careworn, anxious face was lit by a smile as he asked me how I was. A porter meanwhile had secured my box and was wheeling it on a truck along the platform. But, as we walked behind him, that old stupid feeling of constraint had already begun to take possession of me, and my replies to my father’s questions sounded, for all I could do to the contrary, stiff, and even reluctant. It was after one o’clock and dinner was ready when we reached the house. “The train must have been late,” I remarked, indifferently, as we sat down; and then I could think of nothing further to say. It struck me that my father was older and dimmer and shabbier than I had remembered him. He presented the picture, drab and dreary, of perfectly achieved failure, and I found myself looking out for all his old habits, the peculiar noises he made with his nose, his fashion of smacking his lips. I noticed that his hands were not very clean, and that his coat looked as if he had brushed his hair over it. These things struck me all the more forcibly, somehow, because I tried to think how superficial and unimportant they were. I had a vision of the solitary meals he must have taken for the past four months, and I was sorry for him, though subconsciously, at the same time, I was considering how soon it would do for me to mention my proposed visit to Derryaghy. After dinner he asked me what I wanted to do. “It is nice and dry for walking,” he said. “We have had quite a hard frost.” It sounded as if he intended coming with me, a thing he seldom or never did.