The cab laboured up the long hill and jogged very sedately along the level up to the lodge-gate. At this rate he could traverse the short cut on foot more quickly than this deliberate quadruped would make the detour. Getting out at the lodge he struck across its park, arriving at the house before the cab came within sight. He ran through the hall and burst into his father’s room. But the room was empty.
There was his mother, anyhow, in a shady corner of the garden below the terrace, and he hailed her, and next moment was running down the steps and leaping the flower-beds. She rose to meet him, and caught him to her, close and clinging.
“Dennis, darling,” she said. “This is lovely. And, oh, my dear, what a heat you’re in!”
“I know: I ran across the park and got here before the old cab. And where’s Father?”
“He started an hour ago to drive up to London.”
“Oh, how rotten! I think that’s beastly of him. And didn’t he get my telegram to say I was coming this morning?”
Violet hesitated.
“Yes, dear, he did get it,” she said. “He thought that, having said you would come in the afternoon, you ought to have kept to your first plan.”
Dennis looked impartially at this verdict.
“I suppose I ought,” he said. “But as I found I could get here earlier, of course I did. And so he scored off me by making me come up in a cab, and going away himself. When will he be back?”