All were partially clean, and Cyril was just plunging into his great-coat to go and look for his parents—he, and not unjustly, called it looking for a needle in a bundle of hay—when the sound of father's latchkey in the front door sent everyone bounding up the stairs.
"Are you all safe?" cried mother's voice; "are you all safe?" and the next moment she was kneeling on the linoleum of the hall, trying to kiss four damp children at once, and laughing and crying by turns, while father stood looking on and saying he was blessed or something.
"But how did you guess we'd come home?" said Cyril, later, when everyone was calm enough for talking.
"Well, it was rather a rum thing. We heard the Garrick was on fire and, of course, we went straight there," said father, briskly. "We couldn't find you, of course—and we couldn't get in—but the firemen told us everyone was safely out. And then I heard a voice at my ear say, 'Cyril, Anthea, Robert, and Jane'—and something touched me on the shoulder. It was a great yellow pigeon, and it got in the way of my seeing who'd spoken. It fluttered off, and then someone said in the other ear, 'They're safe at home'; and when I turned again, to see who it was speaking, hanged if there wasn't that confounded pigeon on my other shoulder. Dazed by the fire, I suppose. Your mother said it was the voice of——"
"IT WAS A GREAT YELLOW PIGEON."
"I said it was the bird that spoke," said mother, "and so it was. Or at least I thought so then. It wasn't a pigeon. It was an orange-coloured cockatoo. I don't care who it was that spoke. It was true—and you're safe."
Mother began to cry again, and father said bed was a good place after the pleasures of the stage.
So everyone went there.
Robert had a talk to the Phœnix that night.