ew._

Then indeed Michael felt that life was the finest thing conceivable, and
in a burst of affectionate duty wrote a long letter to Stella, giving
with every detail an account of how Wheeler's beat Marlowe's at cricket,
including the running-out of that beast Buckley by Michael amidst the
plaudits of his House. Next morning Alan told him that his mother was
frightfully keen for Michael to stay with them at Richmond, until his
Uncle Ken and Miss Carthew arrived; and so Michael by special leave from
Mr. Wheeler left the House a day or two before the others and had the
exquisite pleasure of travelling up with Alan by the District Railway to
Hammersmith Broadway for a few mornings, and of walking arm in arm with
Alan through the School gates. Mrs. Merivale was as pretty as ever,
almost as pretty as his own beautiful mother, and Mr. Merivale
entertained Michael and Alan with his conjuring tricks and his
phonograph and his ridiculous puns. Even when they reached the gate in a
summer shower and ran past the sweet-smelling rose trees in the garden,
Mr. Merivale shouted from the front door 'Hallo, here come the
Weterans,' but when he had been severely punched for so disgraceful a
joke, he was flatly impenitent and made half a dozen more puns
immediately afterwards. In a day or two Miss Carthew and Captain Ross
arrived, and after they had spent long mysterious days shopping in town,
Michael and Alan and Miss Carthew and Captain Ross travelled down to
Hampshire--the jolliest railway party that was ever known.

Nothing at Basingstead Minor seemed to have changed in five years, from
the dun pony to the phloxes in the garden, from the fantail pigeons to
the gardener who fed the pigs. Michael spent all the first few hours in
rapid renewals of friendship with scenery and animals, dragging Alan at
his heels and even suggesting about ten minutes before the gong would
sound for dinner that they should bunk round and borrow the key of the
tower on the hill. He and Alan slept up in the roof in a delightful
impromptu of a room with uneven bare floor and sloping ceiling and above
their beds a trap-door into an apple loft. There were at least half a
dozen windows with every possible aspect to the neat high road and the
stable-yard and the sun-dyed garden and the tall hills beyond. August
was a blaze of blue and green and gold that year, but everybody at
Cobble Place was busy getting ready for the wedding and Michael and Alan
had the country