It was one of those occasions when a man may live a lifetime in a minute. With a mighty rush his thoughts flew back to the last time he had heard that step. What goodness, what hope, what love did it not bring back to his life! He had taken it all for granted, and thought so little of it; but now, after months of loveless, cheerless drudgery and disappointment, that light step fell with a music which flooded his whole soul.
He sat almost spell-bound as the street-door closed and the steps ascended the stairs. The room seemed to swim round him, and to his broken nerves it seemed for a moment as though he dreaded rather than longed for what was coming. But as the door opened the spell broke and all the mists vanished; he was his own self once more—nothing but the long-lost boy springing to the arms of the long-lost mother.
“Mother!”
“My boy!”
That was all they said. And in those few words Reginald Cruden’s life entered on a new era.
When Horace half an hour later came flying on to the scene they still sat there hand in hand, trying to realise it all, but not succeeding. Horace, however, helped them back to speech, and far into the night they talked. About ten o’clock Harker looked in for a moment, and after them young Gedge, unable to wait till the morning. But they stayed only a moment, and scarcely interrupted the little family reunion.
What those three talked about it would be hard for me to say. What they did not talk about in the past, the present, and the future would be almost easier to set down. And when at last Mrs Cruden rose, and in her old familiar tones said,—
“It’s time to go to bed, boys,” the boys obeyed, as in the days long ago, and came up to her and kissed her, and then went off like children, and slept, like those who never knew what care was, all the happy night.