, and that my return was not too
welcome to my aunt and cousin; but as soon as she was gone, and I was
left alone, home began to speak to me in soft and entrancing whispers.

How my pulses beat, how my nerves tingled! Home! Home! Home!

From that dear spot everything seemed to be the same, and everything had
something to say to me. What sweet and tender and touching memories!

Here was the big black four-post bed, with the rosary hanging at its
head; and here was the praying-stool with the figure of Our Lady on the
wall above it.

I threw up the window, and there was the salt breath of the sea in the
crisp island air; there was the sea itself glistening in the afternoon
sunshine; there was St Mary's Rock draped in its garment of sea-weed,
and there were the clouds of white sea-gulls whirling about it.

Taking off my hat and coat I stepped downstairs and out of the
house--going first into the farm-yard where the spring-less carts were
still clattering over the cobble-stones; then into the cow-house, where
the milkmaids were still sitting on low stools with their heads against
the sides of the slow-eyed Brownies, and the milk rattling in their
noisy pails; then into the farm-kitchen, where the air was full of the
odour of burning turf and the still sweeter smell of cakes baking on a
griddle; and finally into the potting-shed in the garden, where Tommy
the Mate (more than ever like a weather-beaten old salt) was still
working as before.

The old man looked round with his "starboard eye," and recognised me
instantly.

"God bless my sowl," he cried, "if it isn't the lil' missy! Well, well!
Well, well! And she's a woman grown! A real lady too! My gracious; yes,"
he said, after a second and longer look, "and there hasn't been the
match of her on this island since they laid her mother under the sod!"

I wanted to ask him a hundred questions, but Aunt Bridget, who had been
watching from a window, called from the house to say she was "mashing" a
cup of tea for me, so I returned to the drawing-room where (my father
being busy with his letters in the library) Betsy Beauty talked for half
an hour about Lord Raa, his good looks, distinguished manners and
general accomplishments.

"But aren't you just dying to see him?" she said.

I saw him the following morning.

TWENTY-FIFTH CHAPTER

I was sitting in my own room, writing to the Reverend Mother, to tell
her of my return home, when I heard the toot of a horn and