As they reached the living-room they found Miss Browne dusting the piano and tidying the music; the setting of the table was advanced one stage further, that is, the knives and forks were now on.
Roly came up again from another visit to his rats.
'Miss Browne,' he said, 'oh dear, oh dear!'—and stalked off to the kitchen, to demand of Lizzie, the young State girl who scrubbed and washed for them, where was the corned beef for tea, and wasn't there any butter?
But the father was tearing open the letters. Hermie and Bartie hung over his shoulder, reading just as eagerly as he. Floss crouched between his knees to catch the crumbs. Roly, munching while he waited at a hunch of ill-coloured bread, kept an eye and an ear for any spoken news, and Miss Browne moved continually about the room, straightening chairs, altering the position of the table vases, rearranging the knives and forks.
Mr. Cameron looked up, and drew forward a chair next to his own.
'Do sit down, Miss Browne,' he said; 'I am sure you are very tired. Sit down, and let us enjoy this all together.'
So Miss Browne, too, joined the circle, Roly watching her with a brooding eye.
'WINDSOR CASTLE.
'OH, MY DEAR ONES, MY DEAR ONES' ran the white letter,—'Is the earth shaking beneath me, have my hands ague, that my pen trembles like this? We are coming home, home, home. No false reports this time, no heart-sickening disappointment; the papers are actually signed for a long season, and we leave by the Utopia in six weeks. The news came an hour ago. I saw an equerry coming in with the letters, saw the letter that meant so much carried up to my room by a house steward, and had to pass along the corridor and leave it. Challis was going down to play to the Queen in her private sitting-room. But after it all was over how we went to our rooms again! There was only a chambermaid in sight, and for the last twenty yards of corridor we ran. Home, home, home, to your arms, my husband, my dear one, my patient old sweetheart! Home to my little girls, my boys, my little boys! Darlings, my eyes are streaming. Oh, to hold you all again, to feel you, to touch my Hermie's hair—is it all sunlight yet?—to be crushed with Bartie's hug, to hold again the poor little babies I left, my Roly, my little Floss. Ah, dear ones, dear ones, now it is all over, now we are coming, coming to you, I can let you know. Oh, these weary, weary years, these great cities where we have no home, no corner of a home. I have broken my heart for you all every night since I came away. Six years, my dear ones, six years of nights to break my heart. Be sorry for mother, and love her, darlings. Have you forgotten her, Hermie? Bart, Bart, have you kept a little love warm for her? Ah, dear God, my babies will not know me, little Floss will turn away her head. My sweetheart, my sweetheart, if the time has been as long for you, and pleasures as tasteless, and all things as void, then my heart sickens afresh, for I know what your life has been.
'What has kept me up all this weary time I cannot even think. Whatever it was, it has snapped now, and I am limp, useless, broken up into little bits, like nothing so much as a little child stretching out its arms and crying to its mother. Can you not see my arms stretching, stretching to you? Does not my cry come to your little town? It is Challis who is the woman now; she sees my work is done. She had begun to show me the bracelet the Queen gave her, and to tell me what every one had said, but I had torn open Warner's letter, and found the home orders had come. She is packing various little things now, and has rung, and given orders with the dearest little air of self-possession. "Sit down and write, and tell daddie," she said; "I will see to everything now."