as going on, completed the impression of the blissful
countryside. "What a paradise you live in! How _could_ I have left
it?"

"Ay, dear lad; I doubt not it looks strange and new to you since
you've been in South Africa and London. But it'll soon seem homelike
enough. And now you'll like to see your room, and have a wash before
supper. Tom, the gardener, shall take in your bicycle and give it a
rub over. I've still got the old one here in the coach-house which
you left behind. Tom's new, since you left. He's not so clever with
the bees as your old friend Evan was, but he's a steadier lad. I
fear me Evan led you into some of your scrapes. The fault was partly
mine. I shouldn't have let you run wild so much, but I was so
wrapped up in my studies--Well, well!"

David was careful to play his part sufficiently to say when shown
into his old bedroom, "Just the same, father; scarcely a bit
altered--but isn't the bed moved--to another place?"

"You're right, my boy--Ah! your memory can't be as bad as you
pretend. Yes, we moved it there, Bridget and I, because the
Archdeacon came once to stay and complained of the draught from the
window."

"The deuce he did!" said David. "Well, _I_ shan't complain of
anything."

His father left him and he then proceeded to lay out the small
store of things he had brought in his bicycle bag, giving special
prominence to the shaving tackle. He had just finished a summary
toilet when there was a tap on the door, and, suppressing an
exclamation of impatience--for he dearly wanted time and solitude
for collected thought--he admitted Bridget.

"Well, Nannie," he said, "come for a gossip?"

"Yess. I can hardly bear to take my eyes off you, for you've
changed, you _have_ changed. And yet, I don't know? You don't look
much older than you wass when you went off to London to be an
architect. Your cheek--" (lifting her hand and stroking it, while
David tried hard not to wince) "Your cheek's as soft and smooth as
it was then, as any young girl's. Wherever you've been, the world
has not treated you very bad. No one would have dreamt you'd been
all the way to South Africa to them Wild Boars. But some men wear
wonderful well. I suppose your father giv' you a bit of a shock?
He's much older looking; and he wassn't suffering, to speak of, from
his sight when you went away. And now he can hardly see to read even
with his new spectol. Old Doctor Murgatroyd can't do nothing for
him--Advises him to go to