“How d’ye do, mother?” cried Tom, as he threw himself pell-mell into the arms of Mrs. Somers.
“Why, Tom!” almost screamed she, as she returned his embrace. “How do you do?”
“Pretty well, mother. How do you do, father?”
“Glad to see you,” replied Captain Somers, as he seized his son’s hand.
“Bless my soul, Tom!” squeaked gran’ther Greene, shaking in every fibre of his frame from the combined influence of rhapsody and rheumatism.
Tom threw both arms around Jenny’s neck, and kissed her half a dozen times with a concussion like that of a battery of light artillery.
“Why, Tom! I never thought nothin’ of seein’ you!” exclaimed Mrs. Somers. “I thought you was sick in the hospital.”
“I am better now, and home for thirty days.”
“And got your new rig on,” added his father.
“Captain Barney wouldn’t let me come home without my shoulder-straps. I met him in the city. He paid the bills.”