George arrived by the next mail. He did not travel all night, but came in the evening, driving up the avenue with a good deal of noise and commotion, with two flys from the station carrying him and the two children and the luggage they brought, in addition to the brougham which had been sent out of respect to the lady. She occupied it by herself, for it was a small carriage, and she was a large woman, and thus was the first to arrive, stumbling out with a large cage in her hand containing a pair of unhappy birds with drooping feathers and melancholy heads. She would not allow any one to take them from her hand, but stumbled up the steps with them and thrust them upon Winnie, who had come out to the door to receive her brother, but who did not at first realise who this was. “Here, take ’em,” said Mrs. George; “they’re for you, and they’ve been that troublesome! I’ve done nothing but look after them all the voyage. I suppose you’re Winnie,” she added, pausing with a momentary doubt. “I hope you are not very tired,” Winifred said, with that imbecility which extreme surprise and confusion gives. She took the cage, which was heavy, and set it on a table. “And George--where is George?” she said. “Oh, George is coming fast enough; he’s in the first fly with the children. But you don’t look at what I’ve brought you. They’re the true love-birds, the prettiest things in the world. I brought them all the way myself. I trusted them to nobody. George said you would think a deal of them.” “So I shall--when I have time to think. It was very kind,” said Winnie. “Oh, George!” She ran down to meet him as he stepped out with a child on his arm. George was not fat, like his wife, but careworn and spare. “How do you do, Winnie?” he said, taking her outstretched hand. “Would you mind taking the baby till I get Georgie and the things out of the fly?” The baby was a fat baby, and like his mother. He gazed at her with a placid aspect, and did not cry. There was something ludicrous in the situation, which Winifred faintly perceived, though everything was so serious. George was not like the long-lost brother of romance. He had shaken hands with her as if he had parted from her yesterday. He scarcely cast a glance at the house to which he was coming back, but turned quickly to the fly, and lifted out first a little fat boy of three, then parcel after parcel, with a slightly anxious but quite business-like demeanour.