‘I feel as if a load were off my back!’ said Gillian.
And a bar between her and her aunt seemed to have vanished, as they drove up the now familiar slope, and under the leafless copper beeches. Blood is thinker than water, and what five months ago had seemed to be exile, had become the first step towards home, if not home itself, for now, like Valetta, she welcomed the sound of her mother’s voice in her aunt’s. And there were Valetta and Fergus rushing out, almost under the wheels to fly at her, and Aunt Ada’s soft embraces in the hall.
The first voice that came out of the melee was Valetta’s. ‘Gill is grown quite a lady!’
‘How much improved!’ exclaimed Aunt Ada.
‘The Bachfisch has swum into the river,’ was Aunt Jane’s comment.
‘She’ll never be good for anything jolly—no scrambling!’ grumbled Fergus.
‘Now Fergus! didn’t Kitty Somerville and I scramble when we found the gate locked, and thought we saw the spiteful stag, and that he was going to run at us?’
‘I’m afraid that was rather on compulsion, Gill.’
‘It wasn’t the spiteful stag after all, but we had such a long way to come home, and got over the park wall at last by the help of the limb of a tree. We had been taking a bit of wedding-cake to Frank Somerville’s old nurse, and Kitty told her I was her maiden aunt, and we had such fun—her uncle’s wife’s sister, you know.’
‘We sent a great piece of our wedding-cake to the Whites,’ put in Valetta. ‘Fergus and I took it on Saturday afternoon, but nobody was at home but Mrs. White, and she is fatter than ever.’