“It just came over me, as it were, that I might never see the lads again if I didn’t do something about it. You go on thinking there’s time enough and to spare, and then all of a sudden there comes a day when you think there’s no time. That was how it was, yesterday. I just sort of felt I’d be rare and glad to see ’em all again.” The tears came into Mattie’s eyes. “You’ll never know _how_ glad till you _do_ see ’em!” she said, with a break in her voice. “There’s nothing like your own flesh and blood, when all’s said and done. And there’s the grandchildren an’ all.” “Ay, and the garden....” He turned to her then, smiling a little shyly, a little shamefacedly. “I’ve never let on to you about it, Mattie, but I’ve been fair wild to see that garden!” She laughed back at him and his hesitation, triumph and good-humoured affection mingled on her countenance. “You’d no need to let on.... It was plain enough, I’m sure! I’ve known for a long while now you were thinking a deal about it.” “Ay, well, it’d be queer if you hadn’t, I suppose,--you’re that sharp! But I’ve often thought I’d like to take a look in and see how the lads were framing.” “You’ll be seeing how all right before you’re a couple of months older!...” She got to her feet, too, and began sweeping the pots together in a series of joyous movements. “Eh, but I hardly know how to hold myself in about it! I was fair tongue-tied, last night, when you said as we’d best go, but I’m that full of it all to-day, I can’t keep it from wagging! What, I’ve been clacking to the furniture all morning for want of anything better,--telling it all about it as if it was human beings! You’d have laughed fit to crack if you’d seen the way I went on. Len Machell popped in for a word and catched me doing it, and he looked scared out of his life!” He stiffened a little at Machell’s name, feeling a cold wind blow in upon him and his manufactured enthusiasm. As before, the situation had remained more or less in the air until Len touched it; but as soon as he laid a finger upon it, it became concrete.... He said “Machell?” after her, not as a question, but as if weighing a sound which, in the space of a morning, had grown sinister and threatening. But she took no notice. “I was making pretence this house was Over There, and the furniture was the lasses and lads. ‘Eh, Ellen, my girl,’ says I, hugging the grandfather clock, ‘I’m that glad to see you I could cry!’... ‘And is this little Sally?’ I says, kissing yon little stool. ‘She’s grown rarely since her last photo!’ Right daft I must have looked, and no mistake, but I couldn’t help it. I was that chock with it all I had to get shot of it, one way or another.”