"I couldn't quite understand it, but nurse says there are lots of people like that, waiting to make themselves better, instead of running home just as they are. She says some of God's prodigal sons do that; do you think many do, uncle?" "I daresay." "And Tommy said, though he wanted to see his home again dreadfully, he had a great fight with himself to come at all. I didn't know prodigal sons found it so difficult--the one in the Bible didn't, not when he once made up his mind. Well, and so Tommy got out at the station--I'm sorry he came by train, but Jack's uncle paid for his ticket--I would rather he had run the whole way." "Why would you?" asked Sir Edward, with a smile. "I think it would have been more proper if he had," said the child slowly, her head a little on one side, as she gazed thoughtfully into the fire. "I always run or walk the whole way when I play the prodigal son. I begin rather slowly, because it looks a long way off, but when I come near I hurry. I'm wanting to be there when I see my home. The prodigal son didn't have a train in the Bible, and I think Tommy might have tried to do without it." The tone of reproach at the end of her speech was too much for her uncle's gravity, and he laughed aloud. "I am afraid Tommy has sadly disappointed you. Did he take a cab from the station?" "No, he didn't do that. He got home in the afternoon, and Maxwell was cleaning his gun on the doorstep, when he saw a shadow, and he looked up and there he was! Oh! I should like to have been there, but I'm sorry to say Maxwell didn't fall on his neck and kiss him. I asked Tommy very carefully about it, and he said he took hold of both his hands and squeezed them tight, and he gave a shout, and Mrs. Maxwell was doing her washing in the back yard, and she heard it, and she shook all over so that she could hardly walk. She cried so much when she saw Tommy that Maxwell had to pat her on the back and give her a glass of water; and Tommy he sat down on the little seat inside the porch, and he said--these were his very words, uncle--'I ain't fit to come home, father. I'm a disgrace to your name,' and Mrs. Maxwell--Tommy told me--she just took his head between her two hands, and drew it to rest on her shoulder, and then she bent down and kissed him all over and she said:-- "'My boy, who should you come to when you are in disgrace and trouble but your own father and mother?' "Tommy said, when he told me this, 'It fair broke my heart, miss,' and then he gave a great sob, and I began to cry, and then Mrs. Maxwell came up, and her hands were all floury, for she was making an apple pudding, and she cried too, and then we all cried together--at least, Tommy turned his head away and pretended he didn't, but I saw he did." Milly paused for breath, and her eyes looked wistfully into the glowing coals before her.