She led past the study-door into the kitchen, walking a little stiffly, her bones more apparent than of old. Ern followed her with a smile, his hand scraping the familiar varnished paper, his eye catching that of the converted drain-pipe. She was still clearly a woman of one idea--dad. Cautiously his mother closed the door of the kitchen behind him. Then she turned and put her hands upon his shoulders. There was something yearning in her gesture as of a puzzled child asking an explanation. Ern's quick intuitions told him that since he had last seen her his mother had lost something and was missing it. This he noticed and her hands--how worn they were. Fondly he kissed them, realizing a little wistfully that his mother now was an old woman. She smiled at him. "Let me see you," she said, and her eyes dwelt upon his face. For the first time in his life he felt that his mother was depending on him, and was moved accordingly. "You're changed," she said at last. "You're a man now. But your eyes are the same." "How's dad?" he asked. She withdrew from his arms and turned away. "He's an old man now, Ernie," she said.... "He's not what he was.... I don't rightly know what to make of him.... He goes to Meeting now." She was puzzled and pathetic. "Has he turned Quaker?" asked Ernie. "He says not." Just then quiet music sounded from the study. "Is that dad?" asked Ernie, amazed. His mother nodded. "One of them new-fangled machines. Pianolas, don't they call em? I give him one for his birthday." Ernie listened in awed silence. "That's Beethoven," he said. "I'd know it anywhere.... In old days we used to have to go out for that, me and dad did." The music ceased. "Now," said his mother, and opened the kitchen-door. CHAPTER XXIII THE CHANGED MAN Ernie went to the study-door and knocked. "Come in," said a voice that surprised him by its firmness. He entered. His father stood before the fireplace almost as he had left him, save that he had discarded his dressing-gown for a loose long-tailed morning-coat of the kind worn by country gentlemen in the eighties. Physically he had changed very little, spiritually it was clear at the first glance that he was another man. The dignity which had distinguished him at the moment of parting had become his permanent possession. Some shining wind of the spirit blowing through his stagnant streets had purged him thoroughly. His colour was fresh as a child's, his eyes steady and hopeful, and there was a note of quiet exaltation about him, of expectation. "Boy-lad," he said in deeper tones than of old, as they shook hands. Ernie looked round like one lost.