"From a place they call Hell's Annex, seven hundred miles inland from the South African Coast," he laughed lightly. "My arrival timed just to the minute for supper!"
He dropped Wanda's hands with a parting squeeze which was frankly unhidden, strode over to Mrs. Leland whom he kissed resoundingly, and put out a big, strong hand to Martin Leland.
For just a fraction of a second the two women knew that Leland was hesitating, for an instant they waited fearfully, for what he might do. Then he took the hand proffered him, his lips twitched into a hard, forced smile and he said rather colourlessly,
"Well, Wayne, you've come home at last, have you?"
Wayne's answer was a laugh. He seemed filled with laughter to-night. Evidently he had noticed nothing strange in Leland's greeting; he was in the gayest of his gay moods. He had no opportunity to answer Leland's words, for Julia, who had forgotten her usual slow, ponderous method of travel bounced into the room like a wonderfully animated ball at the sound of his voice, and he actually swept the two hundred pounds of her off of her feet as he gathered the big woman up into his arms and kissed her. Then Julia dabbed at her eyes and fled to her kitchen, her emotions finding outlet in an instantaneous desire to make him a pie, Wanda laid a plate for him and supper went on.
Chiefly because of Wanda's eager questions and Wayne Shandon's laughing willingness to tell about his adventures, the abstraction on the part of Martin Leland and the growing anxiety in Mrs. Leland's eyes went unnoticed. Wayne was immoderately hungry as he first frankly confided and then demonstrated, but he found opportunity between mouthfuls to draw, in his sketchy way, the series of pictures which made up the year of his wanderings. He had travelled from New York to London, he had whizzed through Paris and dipped into Baden, he had been seasick on a Mediterranean which wasn't blue, he had barked his shins on a pyramid, he had been swindled out of a ridiculously large sum of money by a little scientist in green spectacles who was out on a mummy digging expedition, and he had gone into the interior after big game. He had managed to take in a Derby and to pick a winner, he had made Monte Carlo recognise that he had come,—although he did not go into detail as to the manner of his departure,—and he had brought home a present for everybody. The skin he had taken from a lion somewhere in some remote jungle to sprawl, rug fashion in Wanda's room, where it created no little havoc in the furniture arrangement and finally caused the dressing table to be shifted to a corner to make place for the enormous, gaping head with the fierce eyes; an Indian shawl for Mrs. Leland, selected evidently for size and brilliance of pattern, very nearly large enough to carpet the dining room and of an astonishing combination of dark greens and riotous reds and royal purples; an ornate scarf pin for Martin Leland who had as much use for a scarf pin as a Mohammedan for a Bible; an exquisite set of chessmen for Garth purchased with a quick eye to the subtle art which had gone into their carving and with a fine disregard for the fact that Garth had existed for thirty odd years without learning that the curveting progress of a knight is in any way different from the ecclesiastical slant of a bishop, completed the assortment of presents.
Garth himself came in as they were pushing back their chairs from the table, throwing open the door with a merry, "Hello, folks," on his lips. Then as he caught sight of Wayne who had leaped up and swung about he stared, suddenly speechless, his mouth dropping open.
"Well, Garth, old boy," cried Wayne heartily. "Aren't you glad to see me?"
Garth came forward then swiftly, his hand out-stretched. But his eyes were still startled rather than glad, and they passed his cousin turning, full of question, to Martin Leland.
"Of course I'm glad," he said, his voice a little uncertain. And then, laughing, "You just surprised me out of my senses. Why didn't you write that you were coming?"