“Ah, you are a father after all!”
His head was within the blind, and he was shutting off with his hands the light of the candles of the room while he peered into the darkness, so that the reproach passed unheeded.
Before she had put her face to the pane her father had dropped the blind that he was holding back.
“Good lud! how the lad has grown!” he said in an astonished whisper.
“Tom! ’tis Tom himself!” cried Betsy, turning from the window and making for the door.
There was a sound of merry voices and many shouts of children’s welcome downstairs—a stamping of feet on the stairs, a stream of questions in various tones of voice, a quiet answer or two, a children’s quarrel in the passage as a boy tried to run in front of a girl. Betsy flung wide the door, crying:
“Tom, brother Tom!”
In another second he was in her arms, kissing her face and being kissed by her without the exchange of a word.
The other members of the family of Linley stood by, the father slightly nervous, fingering an invisible harpsichord, the brothers and sisters callous only when they were not nudging one another lest any detail of the pathetic scene of the meeting of the eldest brother and sister should pass unnoticed.