Hildegarde hardly knew how they all got up-stairs, she was so flurried, so joyfully shaken and melted and confused. But it was only a moment before the tall man was bending over her mother's chair, taking her hands in turn, and gazing at her wistfully, tenderly.
"Mildred Bond!" said Raymond Ferrers. "Am I fifty years old, or fifteen, Mildred? Where are the years gone, my child? You are utterly unchanged."
But this was more than the Colonel could bear.
"Raymond, you are as great an ass as ever!" he cried, bringing down his hand with formidable violence on the slender, stooping shoulder. "Jack, what did I tell you? I said he was a mixture of angel and idiot. Look at him! Hear him! and contradict me if you dare." And then, as his brother turned and laid an arm round his shoulder, the Colonel fairly broke down, and was heard to mutter behind his handkerchief that the world consisted principally of a parcel of fools, and that he was the biggest of them.
CHAPTER XI.
THE BOYS.
"Mammina!"
"Yes, Hilda!"