"It seems as if this were going to be a day of coincidences, one of those days on which if it rains it pours. You've had news--and such news, and I've had letters--such letters, from home. There's one from Nuthurst."
"From your uncle?"
"Yes, from uncle. It's the sweetest letter. I can see him sitting down to write it, at his big table in the justice room, with his eyes, as it were, across the sea, trying with all his might not to put a word on paper which could hurt."
"He wants you to go home?"
"He doesn't say so. In every word he has written I can read what is in his mind; he feels that there are reasons which might make it difficult for me to go, and he doesn't want to hurt me by asking me to do what I mightn't be able to; he thinks it might hurt me to have to refuse. But, Sydney, all through his letter, although he doesn't know it, he's telling me that he is a very old man, and he's crying out for me to come--before he goes."
"Does he speak of me?"
"Does he! He speaks more of you than of me, and he's full of the children. His body is in England, but his spirit is with us in New South Wales. If he weren't such an old man, and so little of a traveller, I'm sure he would come to us; he would have come long ago."
"I wonder what it would feel like to go back to England on a visit?"
"I wonder? I hardly dare to."
"Vi! Is it so bad with you as that?"