To his surprise the door was suddenly flung open as he approached, and a little boy in a velvet tunic came dancing out on to the steps to meet him.
“Roy! Roy!” shouted the little fellow merrily, “I’ve come to meet you!” Then speedily discovering his mistake, he darted back into the doorway, hiding his face in Cecil’s skirt.
She stood there with a little curly-headed child in her arms, and her soft gray eyes and the deep blue baby eyes looked searching out into the semi-darkness. Frithiof thought the little group looked like a picture of the Holy Family. Somehow he no longer dreaded the inside of the house. For the first time for weeks he felt the sort of rest which is akin to happiness as Cecil recognized him, and came forward with a pretty eagerness of manner to greet him, too much astonished at his sudden appearance for any thought of shyness to intervene.
“We thought you must have gone back to Norway,” she exclaimed. “I am so glad you have come to see us. The children thought it was Roy who opened the gate. He will be home directly. He will be so glad to see you.”
“I should have called before,” said Frithiof, “but my days have been very full, and then, too, I was not quite sure of your address.”
He followed her into the brightly lighted hall, and with a sort of satisfaction shut out the damp November twilight.
“We have so often spoken of you and your sisters,” said Cecil, “but when Roy called at the Arundel and found that you had left without giving any address, we thought you must have gone back to Bergen.”
“Did he call on me again there?” said Frithiof. “I remember now he promised that he would come, I ought to have thought of it; but somehow all was confusion that night, and afterward I was too ill.”
“It must have been terrible for you all alone among strangers in a foreign country,” said Cecil, the ready tears starting to her eyes. “Come in and see my mother; she has often heard how good you all were to us in Norway.”
She opened a door on the left of the entrance hall and took him into one of the prettiest rooms he had ever seen: the soft crimson carpet, the inlaid rosewood furniture, the bookshelves with their rows of well-bound books, all seemed to belong to each other, and a delightfully home-like feeling came over him as he sat by the fire, answering Mrs. Boniface’s friendly inquiries; he could almost have fancied himself once more in his father’s study at Bergen—the room where so many of their long winter evenings had been passed.