There should then have followed a blast on the trumpet and three rousing cheers. Alas! the welcome was a complete and devastating failure. Jeremy could be heard to say: “Thanks awfully.... By Jove, I _am_ hungry. How soon’s tea, mother?” Barbara’s howls were now so terrible as to demand immediate attention from everyone. Hamlet had slipped from control and was barking at Aunt Amy, whom he delighted to annoy. Mrs. Cole said: “Now that’s enough, children dear. I’m sure Jeremy’s tired now.” No one had heard Mary’s verses; no one noticed the cocked hats; no one applauded the silver wands. The work of weeks was disregarded. No one thought of Mary at all. She crept away to her room at the top of the house, flung herself upon her bed and howled, biting the counterpane between her teeth. But are not these home-comings always most disappointing affairs? For weeks Jeremy had been looking to this moment. On the frayed wallpaper just above his bed in the school dormitory he had made thick black marks with a pencil, every mark standing for a day. Hard and cynical during his school-day, a barbarian at war with barbarians, at nights, when the lights were out, when the dormitory story-teller’s (unhappy Phipps minor) voice had died off into slumber, in those last few minutes before he too slept, he was sentimental, full of home-sick longings, painting to himself that very springing from the cab, his mother’s kiss, Hamlet’s bark, yes, and even the embraces of his sisters. On the morning of departure, after the excitement of farewells, the strange, almost romantic thrill of the empty schoolrooms, the race in the wagonette (_his_ wagonette against the one with Cox major and Bates and Simpson) to the station, the cheeking of the station-master, the crowding into the railway carriage and leaning (five on top of you) out of the carriage window, the screams of “Bags I the corner,” the ensuing fights with Cox major, after all this gradual approach to known country, the gathering-in as though with an eager hand of remembered places and stations and roads, the half-hour stop at Drymouth (leaving now almost all your companions behind you—only young Marlowe and Sniffs major remaining), the crossing over into Glebeshire, then the beat of the heart, the tightening of the throat, as Polchester gradually approached—all this, yes and more, much more, than this, to end in that disappointment! Everyone looking the same as before, the hall the same, the pictures the same, father and mother and Aunt Amy the same, Mary and Helen the same only stupider! What did they dress up and make fools of themselves like that for? Mary always did the wrong thing, and now most certainly she would be crying in her bedroom because he had not said enough to her. . . .