“There must be a great many things to attend to,” said Cheriton, standing up, and passing his hand over his eyes as if he were rousing himself out of an unnatural dream.
“Not yet,” said Jack, “it is so early. Mr Ellesmere will come back by-and-by.”
Cherry looked round. He noticed that a pair of antlers had been removed from one of the panels, and an impulse came to him to ask why, and then the oddest sense of the incongruity of the remark. He rather knew than felt the truth of the blow that had fallen on them, and all the different aspects of this great change, even to remote particulars, passed over his mind, as over the mind of a drowning man, but as thoughts, not as realities. Suddenly there was a bark and a scutter, and Buffer, in an ecstasy of incongruous joy, rushed into the hall, jumped upon him, yelping, licking, dancing, and writhing with rapture. He was followed by Rolla, who came slowly in, and laid his great tawny head on his master’s knee, looking sorrowfully up in his face as much as to say that he knew well enough that this was like no other home-coming.
Cheriton started up and pushed them all aside. He walked away to the window and stared out at the park, into the library and looked round it, evidently hardly knowing what he was about. Alvar, who had been standing pale and silent, roused himself too, and followed him, putting his arm over his shoulder.
“Come,” he said; “come upstairs. Jack, where is there a fire?”
Cheriton yielded instinctively to Alvar’s hand and voice, and Jack led them upstairs, saying that granny had insisted on their rooms being kept ready for them. Nettie withheld Buffer from following them, and crouched down on the rug by the hall fire till Jack returned to her.
“They have both gone to bed for a little while,” he said; “even Alvar is tired out. Nettie, you had better go to granny, as soon as she is awake, and tell her that they are here, and that Cherry is pretty well.”
“I suppose Cherry will tell us what to do,” said Nettie, as she stood up.
Discipline and absence from home had improved Nettie; she was less childish and more considerate, remembering to tell Jack that he had had no breakfast, and to order some to be ready when the travellers should want it.
Bob, who had been sent for a day or two before, now joined them. He had grown as tall as Jack, but grief and awe gave him a heavy, sullen look, and indeed they said very little to each other. Jack wrote a few necessary letters, and sent them off by one of the grooms, and telegraphed to Judge Cheriton, who was coming that same evening, the news of what he would find. But their father had been so completely manager and master, that Jack felt as if giving an order himself were unjustifiable, and as soon as he dared, he went to see if Cherry were able to talk to him.