“O Charley, my boy!” he exclaimed, “you’ve come at last—God bless you! Let’s look at you. Quite changed: six feet; no, not quite changed—the old nose; black as an Indian. O Charley, my dear boy! I’ve been waiting for you for months; why did you keep me so long, eh? Hang it, where’s my handkerchief?” At this last exclamation Mr Kennedy’s feelings quite overcame him; his full heart overflowed at his eyes, so that when he tried to look at his son, Charley appeared partly magnified and partly broken up into fragments. Fumbling in his pocket for the missing handkerchief, which he did not find, he suddenly seized his fur cap, in a burst of exasperation, and wiped his eyes with that. Immediately after, forgetting that it was a cap, he thrust it into his pocket.
“Come, dear father,” cried Charley, drawing the old man’s arm through his, “let us go home. Is Kate there?”
“Ay, ay,” cried Mr Kennedy, waving his hand as he was dragged away, and bestowing, quite unwittingly, a backhanded slap on the cheek to Harry Somerville, which nearly felled that youth to the ground. “Ay, ay! Kate, to be sure, darling. Yes, quite right, Charley; a pipe—that’s it, my boy, let’s have a pipe!” And thus, uttering incoherent and broken sentences, he disappeared through the doorway with his long-lost and now recovered son.
Meanwhile Harry and Jacques continued to pace quietly before the house, waiting patiently until the first ebullition of feeling at the meeting of Charley with his father and sister should be over. In a few minutes Charley ran out.
“Hollo, Harry! come in, my boy; forgive my forgetfulness, but—”
“My dear fellow,” interrupted Harry, “what nonsense you are talking! Of course you forgot me, and everybody and everything on earth, just now; but have you seen Kate? Is—”
“Yes, yes,” cried Charley, as he pushed his friend before him, and dragged Jacques after him into the parlour.—“Here’s Harry, father, Jacques.—You’ve heard of Jacques, Kate?”
“Harry, my dear boy!” cried Mr Kennedy, seizing his young friend by the hand; “how are you, lad? Better, I hope.”
At that moment Mr Kennedy’s eye fell on Jacques, who stood in the doorway, cap in hand, with the usual quiet smile lighting up his countenance.
“What! Jacques—Jacques Caradoc!” he cried, in astonishment.