One Sunday a queer thing happened. He was just turning home, and passing the lodge at the principal entrance to the Hall, as it was called, when behind the thick evergreen hedge at one side; of the little garden he heard voices. They were speaking too low for him to distinguish the words; but one voice sounded to him very like Eames's. It might be so, for the farmer and the lodge-keeper were friends. And Geoff would have walked on without thinking anything of it, had not a sudden exclamation caught his ear—"Hoot-toot, hoot-toot! I tell you——" But instantly the voice dropped. It sounded as if some one had held up a warning finger. Geoff stood still in amazement. Could Great-Uncle Hoot-Toot be there? It seemed too impossible. But the boy's heart beat fast with a vague feeling of expectation and apprehension mixed together.
"If he has come here accidentally, he must not see me," he said to himself; and he hurried down the road as fast as he could, determined to hasten to the station and back before the old gentleman, if it were he, could get there. But to his surprise, on entering the farm-yard, the first person to meet him was Mr. Eames himself.
"What's the matter, my lad?" he said good humouredly. "Thou'st staring as if I were a ghost."
"I thought—I thought," stammered Geoff, "that I saw—no, heard your voice just now at the lodge."
Eames laughed.
"But I couldn't be in two places at once, could I? Well, get off with you to the station."
All was as usual of a Sunday there. No one about, no passengers by the up-train—only the milk-cans; and Geoff, as he drove slowly home again, almost persuaded himself that the familiar "Hoot-toot, hoot-toot!" must have been altogether his own fancy.
But had he been at the little railway-station again an hour or two later, he would have had reason to change his opinion. A passenger did start from Shalecray by the last train for town; and when this same passenger got out at Victoria, he hailed a hansom, and was driven quickly westward. And when he arrived at his destination, and rang the bell, almost before the servant had had time to open the door, a little figure pressed eagerly forward, and a soft, clear voice exclaimed—
"Oh, dear uncle, is that you at last? I've been watching for you such a long time. Oh, do—do tell me about Geoff! Did you see him? And oh, dear uncle, is he very unhappy?"
"Come upstairs, my pet," said the old man, "and you shall hear all I can tell."