Then the old woman took her turn: "Master David! Eh, but you're changed, mun!"--then a lot of Welsh exclamations, which until the Welsh can agree to spell their tongue phonetically I shall not insert--"Five years since you left us! Eh, and I never thought to see you no more. Some said you wass dead, others that you wass taken prisoner by the Wild Boars. But here you are, and welcome--indeed--" Then Master David between the embraces was scanned, a little more critically than by the purblind father, but with distinct approval. At last David stood apart in the stone-flagged hall of the Vicarage. His abundant hair was rumpled, his face was stained by other people's tears, his collar, tie, dress disordered, and his heart touched. It was a rare experience in his twenty-four years of life--he guessed that should be his age--to find himself really taken on trust, really desired and loved. Honoria's friendship was a pure and precious thing, but in its very purity carefully restrained. Praddy's kindness, and the office boy's worship had both been gratifying to Vivie's self-esteem, but both had to be kept at bay. Somehow the love of a father and of an old nurse were of a different category to these other contacts. All these thoughts passed through David's brain in thirty seconds. He shook himself, straightened himself, smiled adequately, and tried to live up to the situation. "Dear father! And dear ... Nannie! (A bold but successful deduction). How sweet of you both--greeting me like this. I've come home a very different David to the one that left you--what was it? Five--six years ago?--to go to Mr. Praed's studio. I've learnt a lot in the interval. But I'm so sick of the past, I don't want to talk about it more than I can help, and I've been in very queer health since I got ill--and--wounded--in--South Africa. My memory has gone for many things--I'm afraid I've forgotten all my Welsh, Nannie, but it'll soon come back, that is, if I may stay here a bit." (Exclamations from father and nurse: "This is your _home_, Davy-bach!") "I'm not going to stay too long this time because I've got my living to earn in London.... "Did you never hear anything about me from ... South Africa ... or the War Office--or--your old college chum, Mr. Gardner?" "I heard--my own dear boy--" said the Revd. Howel, again taking him in his arms in a renewed spasm of affection. "I heard you were wounded and very ill in the camp hospital at Colesberg. It was a nursing sister, I think, who sent me the information. I wrote several times to the War Office, my letters were acknowledged, that was all. Then Sam Gardner wrote to me from Margate and said his son had been in the same hospital with you. Later on I saw in a Bristol paper that this hospital--Colesberg--had fallen into the hands of the Boers and the Cape insurgents. Then I said to myself 'My poor boy's been taken prisoner' and as time went on, 'My poor boy's dead, or he would have written to me.'"