mit, as he watched him shake hands quietly with Killigrew, that this
dreaded and disliked brother had given the most unexceptional greeting
of any of his family.

Tom sat down, but refused food. He had only come out to see his mother,
and because it was Ishmael's birthday, or so he said.

"Is anything the matter, Tom?" asked Annie artlessly.

"No, what should there be?" demanded Tom in a slightly contemptuous
fashion. "Can't I want to see you without that? Don't give me away
before the visitor, especially as Ishmael's such an attentive son."

Annie began to sniff, and Vassie bade him, in an angry undertone, be
quiet. Tom obeyed, but it was an odd quietness as of something waiting
its time. Conversation drooped as though a blight had fallen upon it,
and once or twice Tom might have been observed to glance towards the
window.

"I'll have a drink if I won't eat," he declared at last. "I must drink
the young un's health on an occasion like this, after all. Here, mother,
fill up."

Killigrew leapt to intercept Annie and fetch her the big cider jug from
the dinner-waggon, and giggling like a girl she took it from him and
filled the glasses. Some faint return of gaiety, the sense of it being
Ishmael's evening, returned, and he sat as they raised glasses to him,
in a sudden brightening. As she was tilting hers to her lips, Annie gave
a sudden cry, so sharp everyone stopped, glass in hand. A shadow had
fallen across the window, barring the flow of the westering light, and
towards it Annie was staring. The others followed her gaze.

Bearded, brown, roughly clad in a big coat hunched about his ears,
Archelaus stood looking in. He continued to stand, motionless, after he
had been seen. Annie cried out again and, almost dropping her tumbler on
to the table, rushed from the room, knocking against the door-frame in
her blundering way as she went. The others stood bewildered a moment,
not taking it in, not recognising the bearded figure that stayed
motionless, itself giving no sign of recognition. It was Ishmael, who
had not seen his brother since he himself was very little, who yet knew
him the first, warned by some instinct. He got up and went out, followed
by the others, who all talked at once though he stayed silent.

In the yard Annie was clinging around Archelaus, and the big man
suffered it with a better grace than in the old days, though with a
careless good-nature. Tom, smiling, stood a little behind the two of
them.