But the strangest feeling of all was the wonder as to how I should be received by those whose welcome had been looked to with such loving anticipation, and such timorous anxiety. I felt like a sort of pale and faded version of the prodigal son. I need have been under no fear. My father’s old servant, the faithful friend of a quarter of a century, met me at the station. The tears were in his good, old, kind eyes. My father was waiting for me at Hobart Place, and in half an hour my dear old cousin, Lord Redesdale, in spite of a sharp attack of gout, came in to shake me by the hand. It did not take long to make me feel as if I had never strayed away from home. Peking, Mongolia, Japan, the revolution, faded like shadows of dreamland. There were more grey hairs in my father’s head, a few coming in my own—otherwise little change. The Great Reaper had been merciful, for of those nearest and dearest to me the scythe of death had spared almost all. I lost no time in reporting myself at the Foreign Office, where I found very few changes. Mr. Hammond was as kind as ever, and said many pleasant things to me about the work that I had done in the East, for he was always generous in his appreciation of any endeavour on the part of his subordinates. What pleased me very much was that I was to have a year’s leave. I had been a good deal knocked up by the strenuous life of the last two years in Japan, and my old friend, Dr. Quain, had commanded a rest, so the idea of a long holiday was very welcome—the more so as I was getting ready my “Tales of Old Japan” for the press, a formidable first plunge into the world of letters. Lord Clarendon, who was then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, hearing that I was in the office, sent for me and kept me with him for some time, talking over the intricacies of the Japanese revolution, and bade me go and see him in Grosvenor Crescent. My own colleagues were to the full as gracious as the big men, so I had no reason to complain of my first visit to the Foreign Office. Altogether I felt that I had come back to a kind and generous world, and when I went into certain drawing-rooms with the same arm-chairs, the same curtains, and the same Sèvres vases on the chimney-pieces as of yore, I hardly needed the cordial greeting to assure me that I was as much at home there as I had been five long years ago.