She waited till the children were in bed and she was alone with Anthony. "Something awful's happened," she said, and paused hoping he would guess. "I don't know how to tell you." "Don't tell me if it's that Nicky's been taking my new bike to pieces." "It isn't Nicky--It's Maurice." Anthony got up and cleared his pipe, thoroughly and deliberately. She wondered whether he had heard. "I'd no business to have married you--to have let you in for him." "Why? What's he been up to now?" "He's coming home." "So," said Anthony, "is Bartholomew. I'd no business to have let you in for _him_." "Don't worry, Frances. If Morrie comes home he'll be sent out again, that's all." "At your expense." "I don't grudge any expense in sending Morrie out. Nor in keeping him out." "Yes. But this time it's different. It's worse." "Why worse?" "Because of the children. They're older now than they were last time. They'll understand." "What if they do? They must learn," Anthony said, "to realize facts." They realized them rather sooner than he had expected. Nobody but Louie had allowed for the possibility of Morrie's sailing by the same steamer as his letter; and Louie had argued that, if he had done so, he was bound either to have arrived before the letter or to have sent a wire. Therefore they had at least a clear five days of peace before them. Anthony thought he had shown wisdom when, the next morning which was a Wednesday, he sent Grannie and the Aunties to Eastbourne for a week, so that they shouldn't worry Frances, and when on Thursday he made her go with him for a long day in the country, to take her mind off Morrie. They came back at nine in the evening and found Dorothy, Michael and Nicholas sitting up for them. Michael and Nicky were excited, but Dorothy looked grown-up and important. "Uncle Morrie's come," they said. "Dorothy saw him first--" "Nicky let him in--" "He hadn't got a hat on." "We kept him in the schoolroom till Nanna could come and put him to bed." "He was crying because he'd been to Grannie's house and there wasn't anybody there--" "And because he'd lost the love-birds he'd brought for Auntie Emmy--" "And because he couldn't remember which of us was dead." "No, Mummy, nobody's seen him but us and Nanna." "Nanna's with him now." Uncle Morrie never accounted, even to himself, for the time he had spent between the arrival of his ship at Tilbury on Sunday morning and that Saturday afternoon. Neither could he remember what had become of his luggage or whether he had ever had any. Only the County Council man, going his last rounds in the farthest places of the Heath, came upon a small bundle tied in a blue handkerchief, a cap belonging to E.D. Boulger, of the S.S. _Arizona_, a cage of love-birds, and a distinct impression of a recumbent human form, on the grass together, under a young birch tree.