“There’s no fear of that! I’ve never had a bonnier job to do before, and I’ll likely never have as good again!... Every spring when it came round I’ve prayed as this might happen, and it’s happened at last. It was always worse in the spring. You can stand a deal of things in the winter when you’re comfortable like, and you’ve your own hearth-fire; but you want to be stirring in the spring.” He did his best to nod sympathisingly at the wistfulness in her tone, but he could find no answer to give her. He had never known what it was to be afflicted by the fever of spring-wandering. He had never wanted to leave his gardens at any time, but especially not in the spring. Leaving a garden before the spring-sowing was finished would have seemed to him like leaving a child before it was able to walk.... It was true, of course, that last night he had signed his gardens away, and that, too, in the spring. But he had only signed them away in exchange for another garden, and the work would be well on its way before he went. It was not restlessness but weariness which had forced him to a reaching-out towards new life; not the spring-fret but the overwhelming pressure of years which was driving him overseas. “I just can’t believe we’re really going!” he discovered Mattie to be saying, when his mind returned to her. “It don’t seem possible. To think we’re going to see the lads once more, and hear ’em speak! They’ll have altered a deal, I reckon, especially Joe. I always said Joe would make something to look at, if he once got going, and it’s queer if he hasn’t, out there. They say the air’s that grand, it’s like fine wine. I don’t know much about wine, but I’ve always hankered after the sort of air that sounded like it. I’ve sometimes thought I could breathe a bit of it, after reading the letters.... Then there’s the girls, too,--I fair ache to set eyes on ’em. Maggie, now,--she was always a good sort; but I don’t know how I’ll contain myself when I see Ellen. I thought a deal of ’em all, as you know, and lads is always lads, but I’ve sometimes thought I kept the softest spot of all for my little Ellen!” He heard the words at first as one hears a familiar tune played from afar off, familiar but unmeaning; but presently the intensity of her feeling got home to him, and his outlook brightened. He had been troubled when he first came into the house, jarred both by its chaotic state and by the events of the morning, but as the meal proceeded he found himself calming gradually. It was impossible, in any case, not to find something infectious in Mattie’s attitude; to feel, if only as a pale reflection, something of her ecstasy. With a deliberate effort he adjusted his angle of mind, setting aside his preoccupation with the things that he must lose, and forcing himself to turn his attention to the things that he would gain.