and looked at him.

His body was covered with a rug; his hands, still brown and large and
clumsy, were folded on his lap; he was wonderfully tidy, brushed and
cleaned, it seemed to her, as though he were always expecting a doctor
or a visitor or were performed upon by some valet or other, simply, poor
dear, that the time might be filled. His cheeks were paler of course and
his face thinner, but it was in his eyes--his large, simple, singularly
ungrown-up eyes she had always considered them--that the great change
lay--

They smiled across at her with the same genial good temper that they had
always presented to her. But indeed she could never call them
"ungrown-up" again. Roddy Seddon had grown up indeed since she had seen
him last; she knew now, as she faced the experience and, above all, the
strength that those eyes now presented for her, that she had a new
spirit to encounter.

Yes--he "had had a horrible time," but she was wise enough, at that
instant, to realise that the "horrible time" had drawn character out of
him that she, at least, had never, for an instant, suspected.

The old woman was moved so that she would have liked to have tottered to
his sofa, to have caught his hands in her old dry ones, to have kissed
him, to have smoothed his hair--but she sat quietly in her chair,
recovered her breath and, grimly, almost saturninely, smiled at him.

"Well, Roddy," she said, "how are you?"

"I'm quite splendid. Play patience like a professor, can knit five
mufflers in a week and am learning two foreign languages--But indeed
how rippin' to see you here. I've spent a lot o' time on this old sofa
wonderin' how you and I were goin' to see one another."

"Have you?" She was pleased at that--"Well, you see, I _have_ managed it
and quite easily too, not so bad after thirty years. My _good_ Roddy,
you of all people to tumble off a horse! What _were_ you about?"

"Oh! it was simple enough." Roddy's eyes worked swiftly to the park and
then back again. "I was worried, you see--my thoughts were wandering,
and the old mare just tripped into a hole, pitched and flung me--I fell
on a heap o' stones, _they_ knocked the sense out of me, the horse was
frightened and went dashin' along with me tangled up in her. All came of
my thoughts wanderin'--But you know, Duchess, I've had heaps of
accidents, heaps and heaps, every kind of thing has happened to me, but
it's never been serious--always the most wonderful luck. Well, for on