I felt much better and more comfortable after meeting the man. I got almost directly to where our short cut through the copse begins, and that made it seem more like home. I thought that I could let myself begin to run there, because it’s such a little way, but all the same I did feel frightened before I got to the house. I rushed up to the front door and tugged at the handle. It was locked! Well, of course, I might have known that it would be, but at the time it seemed the worst thing of all. I began screaming out “Mother, Mother!” and I was all shaking and crying, I don’t know why. Almost before you’d have thought there was time, the door was pulled back and Mother had hold of me. After that it was all right, of course, and almost too nice to tell. Mother had come running down just as she was, though she said afterwards that she hadn’t really believed that it could be me, and had thought that she was dreaming it all. She carried me up and undressed me and put me into her own bed. I was still rather silly, for I didn’t seem to be able to say anything, only a line I’d read kept going on inside my head about “Port after stormy seas.” Presently, though, Mother began to ask me questions. She kept asking me if I had really come all the way alone, as if she could hardly believe it. Each time I said “Yes” she cuddled me again. Then she asked me if Mrs. Charlton knew; so I ’splained about it. Mother didn’t say anything hardly then, but she wrote a telegram for Mrs. Charlton to say that I’d arrived safely, and she put it for the gardener to take to the post-office the first thing in the morning. Mother got me some milk, and some cake, which I ate while she went in for a minute to see Humph. I forgot to say that of course I’d asked about him at the beginning, and Mother said that he had got much better the last day. Fräulein was with him, so Mother didn’t have to stay. She came back to me, and I was so happy it seemed to make me sleepy all at once. It was almost too lovely to feel that Mother was quite close to me. The next day it wasn’t so nice, though. Mother talked to me a long time, and she said a thing that made me feel dreadfully bad; she said I’d been selfish; I’d thought of my own feelings but not of other people’s. She said that fortunately Mrs. Charlton had not discovered my absence until the next morning, but if she had done so she would have been extremely worried, and, at her age, it might have made her quite ill. Also she’d have telegraphed home, and Mother says had she known that I was wandering about the country by myself all night, she could hardly have borne it, especially when Humphrey was so ill and Father away. I minded that part much more than about Mrs. Charlton. Mother looked so unhappy, it was dreadful. I promised and promised I’d never do such a thing again.