'LYNDHURST, 4th July.—Philip Dutton to Miss Egremont. Found. Waterloo, 6.15.'
'I knew he would,' said Nuttie, with a strange quietness, but as she tried to read it to her father her voice choked, and she had to hand it to Annaple. But for the first time in her life she went up and voluntarily kissed her father's forehead. And perhaps it was for the first time in his life that the exclamation broke from him, 'Thank God!'
Perhaps it was well that the telegram had not come earlier in the day, for Mr. Egremont was very restless, showing himself much shaken in nerves and spirits before the time for driving to the station, which he greatly antedated. Nuttie could hardly keep him in the carriage, and indeed had to persuade him to return thither, when he had once sprung out on the arrival of a wrong train.
And after all, when the train did come, his blue spectacles were directed to the row of doors at the other end, and Nuttie was anxiously trying to save him from being jostled, when a voice said 'Here!' and close beside them stood Mr. Dutton, with a little boy by his side who looked up in her face and said 'Sister!' It was said in a dreamy, almost puzzled way, not with the ecstatic joy Nuttie had figured to herself; and there was something passive in the mode of his hearing his father's 'My boy, my boy!' Instinctively all turned to the harbour of the carriage; Mr. Dutton lifted Alwyn in, and as Nuttie received him, a pang shot across her, as she felt how light, how bony the little frame had become in these three weeks.
'Come in! Come back with us! Tell us all!' said Mr. Egremont, as Mr. Dutton was about to help him in.
'My dog,' said Mr. Dutton, while Alwyn looked up from nestling in Nuttie's lap to say, 'Mithter Button come! And Mothu!'
'We have room for him,' said Mr. Egremont graciously. 'Here, poor fellow.'
'He has the right,' said Mr. Dutton, 'for he was the real finder.'
And Monsieur, curly and shiny, occupied with great dignity the back seat beside his master, while Alwyn, in a silent but dreamy content, as if he only half understood where he was, rested against his sister's bosom with his hands in his father's.
'Come, old chap,' said his father cheerily, 'tell us all about it.'