“Very well,” he said, “and glad to see you.”
Arthur was quite quiet and calm; but he was very grave, and made no attempt to feign an ordinary tone of feeling that could not have been real; he was always entirely genuine, and rarely thought of the effect of his own demeanour. Mrs Crichton looked at him anxiously, he was a good deal tanned and rather thinner than of old; but she thought that he did look well and wonderfully like himself.
“Isn’t Freddie here?” he said.
“Yes—there she is—she has been at school.”
Ah! he went forward rather eagerly to meet her; but Frederica, nervous and excited, and by no means sharing his absence of self-consciousness, kissed him rather boisterously than tenderly, and began to talk fast because she was afraid of crying.
“I suppose Hugh is at the Bank,” said Arthur; but as he spoke there was a rush and a scamper through the hall, and Snap, his terrier, rushed upon him with a welcome in which there was no cloud of embarrassment, and no room for regrets. After that Arthur was glad to get away to look after his luggage, and when he came back afternoon tea was in progress, and he sat down and talked about his journey and the wonders of Rome, and the new coloured curtains Jem had hung up in his highly-decorated rooms. Arthur was a pleasant talker, and they thought how nice it was to have him at home again. But he looked vaguely about the room between whiles, as if its changes perplexed him. He walked over to the window and looked out, where the light was dying away on the garden-paths. He had expected to feel the first sight of home severely—he hardly felt anything except that he had been there for a long time—an interminable number of hours.
Hugh was, perhaps purposely, late, and at length Mrs Crichton proposed going to dress, audibly wondering why he did not come.
“There he is!” said Freddie, as a horse’s hoofs sounded. “Hugh,” she added, throwing open the door, “here’s Arthur!”
Arthur started up and went forward.
“Hugh!” he said with a sort of eagerness: