Tumpany snatched the pipe from his mouth and stood to attention. The cook vanished into the kitchen.
"Can I see you then, Mum?" Tumpany asked, anxiously.
"After breakfast. I've not had breakfast yet. Then we'll go into everything."
She vanished.
"Them peas," said Tumpany to himself, "he'll want to know about them peas—Goodorg!"—accompanied by Trust, Tumpany disappeared in the direction of the kitchen garden.
But Mary sat long over breakfast that morning. The sunlight painted oblongs of gold upon the jade-green carpet. A bee visited the copper bowl of honeysuckle upon the sideboard, a wasp became hopelessly captured by the marmalade, and from the bedrooms the voice of Blanche, the housemaid, floated down—tunefully convinced that every nice girl loves a sailor.
And of all these homely sounds Mary Lothian's ear had little heed.
Sound, light, colour, the scent of the flowers in the garden—a thing almost musical in itself—were as nothing.
One happy fact had closed each avenue of sense. Gilbert was coming home!
Gilbert was coming home!