If my mother sent me into the garden to see whether the autumn crocuses were up--all I could see was his face. It came up everywhere I looked. I grew impatient of the companionship I had most loved. I was thankful when Hermione had carried off my sister for the afternoon. I felt Lord Helmstone had done me a personal kindness when he dropped in, on the way to or from the golf links, to talk to my mother. I would slip away just for ten minutes to think about "him" in peace. When I went in I would find I had been gone for hours. The old laws of Time and Space seemed all at sixes and sevens. The old devotions paled. Mercifully, nobody knew. * * * * * I looked for him all the next spring. In the summer I said to myself, I shall never see him again. Then a day in September when he came. Came not only to Big Klaus's and the Links. He came to Duncombe the very first evening, to ask about my mother. I heard his voice at the door. It seemed to come up from the roots of the world to knock against my heart. I stood by the banisters out of sight and listened, while I held the banisters hard. No, he wouldn't come in now. He would come to-morrow. I flew to the window in the morning-room, and looked out. I had not dreamed him. He was true. * * * * * The next day brought him. I had all those hours to get myself in hand. I was quite quiet. The others seemed gladder to see him than I. He was pleased at finding my mother so well. The crowning proof of her being stronger was her doing a quite unprecedented thing. She invited Mr. Annan to come and have tea at Duncombe, instead of tramping all that distance back to the Farm. Big Klaus's tea she was sure was worse even than the Club House brew. The result was that he fell into the habit of playing another round after tea, which my mother said was good for him. She agreed with Lord Helmstone that Mr. Annan should not work when he had come away for a holiday. The Helmstones were for ever asking him to lunch and dine. But he always said "that sort of thing" took up too much time. So we felt flattered when, instead of playing the other round, he would sit there in the garden, after tea, smoking a pipe and talking to us. Bettina said our home-made cakes and delicious Duncombe tea were quite wasted on him. I was secretly indignant at the charge. But Bettina made him confess he could not tell Indian from China. "Very well then," I said, "it proves he doesn't come only for tea," and upon that a fire seemed to play all round my body, scorching me. But no one noticed. It was wonderful to see him again--to verify all those things I had been thinking about him for the year and four months since he went away.