When they reached the station the train was just in sight, and Dorothy got down to await its arrival. Presently it snorted up composedly—trains do not hurry themselves on the single lines in the Eastern counties—and in due course deposited Ernest and his portmanteau.
“Hullo, Doll! so you have come to meet me. How are you, old girl?” and he embraced her on the platform.
“You shouldn’t, Ernest: I am too big to be kissed like a little girl, and in public too.”
“Big—h’m! Miss five feet nothing, and as for the public, I don’t see any.” The train had gone on, and the solitary porter had vanished with the portmanteau.
“Well, there is no need for you to laugh at me for being small; it is not everybody who can be a May-pole, like you, or as broad as he is long, like Jeremy.”
An unearthly view halloo from this last-named personage, who had caught sight of Ernest through the door of the booking-office, put a stop to further controversy, and presently all three were driving back, each talking at the top of his or her voice.
At the door of Dum’s Ness they found Mr. Cardus apparently gazing abstractedly at the ocean, but in reality waiting to greet Ernest, to whom of late years he had grown greatly attached, though his reserve seldom allowed him to show it.
“Hullo, uncle, how are you? You look pretty fresh,” sang out that young gentleman before the cart had fairly come to a standstill.
“Very well, thank you, Ernest. I need not ask how you are. I am glad to see you back. You have come at a lucky moment, too, for the ‘Batemania Wallisii’ is in flower, and the ‘Grammatophyllum speciosum’ too. The last is splendid.”
“Ah,” said Ernest, deeply interested, for he had much of his uncle’s love for orchids, “let’s go and see them.”