They clung together almost as they had done when they were the riotous elements of the household, while Lance opened the front door, and Robina, mindful of appearances, impelled them into the hall, Bernard exclaiming, “Pratt’s room! Whose teeth is it?” “Don’t you want Wilmet to hold your hands and make you open your mouth?” said Lance, laughing. Gertrude, who had already received the Indian arrival, met Angela, who was bounding up to see to her charge, with, “Not come in yet! She is gone out with the children quite happily, with Awdrey’s doll in her arms. Come and enjoy each other in peace.” “In the office, please,” said Angela. “That is home. We shall be our four old selves.” Lance opened the office door, and gave a hint to Mr. Lamb, while they looked at each other by the fire. Bernard was by far the most altered. The others were slightly changed, but still their “old selves,” while he was a grave responsible man, looking older than Lancelot, partly from the effects of climate; but Angela saw enough to make her exclaim, “Here we are! Don’t you feel as if we were had down to Felix to be blown up?” “Not a bit altered,” said Bernard, looking at the desks and shelves of ledgers, with the photographs over the mantelpiece—Felix, Mr. Froggatt, the old foreman, and a print of Garofalo’s Vision of St. Augustine, hung up long ago by Felix, as Lance explained, as a token of the faith to which all human science and learning should be subordinated. “A declaration of the _Pursuivant_,” said Angela. “How Fulbert did look out for _Pur_! I believe it was his only literature.” “Phyllis declares,” said Bernard, “that nothing so upsets me as a failure in _Pur’s_ arrival.” “And this is _Pur’s_ heart and centre!” said Robina. “Only,” added Angela, “I miss the smell of burnt clay that used to pervade the place, and that Alda so hated.” “Happily the clay is used up,” said Lance. “I could not have brought Gertrude and the children here if the ceramic art, as they call it, had not departed. Cherry was so delighted at our coming to live here. She loved the old struggling days.” “Fulbert said he never felt as if he had been at home till he came here. He never _took_ to Vale Leston.” “Clement and Cherry have settled in very happily,” said Robina, “with convalescent clergy in the Vicarage.” “I say, Angel, let us have a run over there,” cried Bernard, “you and I together, for a bit of mischief.” “Do, _do_ let us! Though this is real home, our first waking to perception and naughtiness, it is more than Vale Leston. We seem to have been up in a balloon all those five happy years.” “A balloon?” said Bernard. “Nay, it seems to me that till they were over, I never thought at all except how to get the most rollicking and the finest rowing out of life. It seems to me that I had about as much sense as a green monkey.” “Something sank in, though,” said Lance; “you did not drift off like poor Edgar.”