Lucy had not seen or heard from the Brands for some time. Such silences were not unusual between the two households, unless something special was going forward. Lucy knew that her sister had been paying some country-house visits, and felt sure she should hear from her when she came home to make her preparations for the annual family migration to the seaside. The summer holidays began at the Institute. Of course, it was impossible for Lucy or Miss Latimer to think of leaving home when they had just received a strange servant and a guest. Still, the holidays meant considerable relaxation. Hugh had his holidays, too, and he and his mother, and sometimes Miss Latimer, too, used to go off together to Hampstead or Highgate or Greenwich, where he could gather wild flowers and play about, while she found quaint or pretty “bits” for sketches. Then, when they came home, there was Tom with funny stories about people and events at the office, or the “latest news” of the evening. The domestic group, with their varied ages and developments, made, as it were, a pretty household chime—the child’s exuberant inconsequence melting into Tom’s boyish enthusiasms, and those rising towards Lucy’s serious ideals and soberer outlook on life, and Miss Latimer’s gentle pathos. Of course, to old household loves and loyalties bred from years of mutual experience, this was but as a sketch is to a masterpiece. But it was good so far as it went. And every masterpiece has been but a sketch once! It was certainly a lovely gleam of peace and content, but Lucy knew that for her its brightness was derived from her consciousness that Charlie, in all the elation of renewed health, might now be considered fairly on his homeward way! His last letter, which had arrived three days after Tom Black’s in-coming, had come from Hong Kong, whither Captain Grant had unexpectedly steered his course, owing to the unforeseen demands of a promising branch of business. They would leave that port a day or two after the letter was posted, and might reasonably expect to arrive at Vancouver well within the year of Charlie’s proposed absence. But the _Slains Castle_ herself, after despatching her business at the Canadian port, would have to return home all round by Cape Horn, thus not only unconscionably prolonging her voyage, but doing this through stormy seas at an inclement season. Captain Grant, however, had declared that he had never had such a fortunate voyage, that Charlie had been such a “luck” passenger, and that as circumstances had broken his own promise that his ship would not be away more than a year, so on his side he would release Charlie at Vancouver, rebating from the hundred guinea fee enough to pay for Charlie’s land journey by the Pacific Railway and the short Atlantic voyage by a liner from New York.