our way homewards. When I say home, of course you understand that
we have no home as yet, but we are going to look round for a house as
soon as possible. We know exactly what we want, so it ought to be easy
to get it. A dear old place in the country--the _real_ country, not a
suburb, but within half an hour's rail of town. A house covered with
roses and creepers, and surrounded by a garden. Oh! think of seeing
English grass again--the green, _green_ grass, and walking along between
hedges of wild roses and honeysuckle; and the smell of the earth after
it has rained, and all the little leaves are glistening with water--do
you remember--oh! do you remember?" cried Peggy, clasping her eager
hands, and gazing at her companion with a sudden glimmer of tears which
rose from very excess of happiness. "I don't say so to mother, because
it would seem as if I had not been happy abroad; but I _ache_ for
England! Sometimes in the midst of the Indian glare I used to have a
curious wild longing, not for the Country... that was always there--but
for the dull, old Tottenham Court Road! Don't laugh! It was no
laughing matter. You know how dull that road looks, how ugly and grimy,
and how grey, grey, grey in rainy weather? Well, amidst the glare of
Eastern surroundings that scene used to come back to me as something so
thoroughly, typically English, that its very dreariness made the
attraction. I have stood in the midst of palm and aloes, and just
longed my very heart out for Tottenham Court Road!"

Major Darcy laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

"I know the feeling--had it myself; but you will lose it soon enough.
In the East you gasp and long for England; in England you shudder and
long for the East. It's the way of the world. What you haven't got
seems always the thing you want; but no sooner have you got it than you
realise its defects. England will strike you as intolerably dreary when
you are really there."

Peggy shook her head obstinately.

"Never! I was ablaze with patriotism before I left, and I have been
growing worse and worse all the time I have been abroad. And it will
_not_ be dreary! What is the use of imagining disagreeable things? You
might just as well imagine nice ones while you are about it. Now _I_
imagine that it is going to be a perfect summer--clear, and fine, and
warm, with the delicious warmth which is so utterly different from that
dreadful India scald. And father and I are going to t