which the doctor only used on state occasions, and
must have brought out this afternoon with the preconceived idea of its
being specially wanted.

"This _is_ jolly!" exclaimed Cissy as they all drove off gaily down the
sleepy lane, passing neither man nor beast on their way. "You are very
good to us, doctor!"

"Ho, ho, ho! Miss Cissy," laughed he; "you're getting extremely
familiar to address me like that. Jolly, indeed! why, that's my name,
ho, ho!"

"I--I didn't think," stammered poor Cissy rather abashed, blushing
furiously, while Conny took advantage of the opportunity to point out to
her the evil effects of using slang words; but the little lecture of the
elder sister was soon joked away by the doctor, and they arrived at the
station in the best of spirits.

Here they met with a wonderful surprise.

Some one who must have heard the news somehow or other of Teddy's return
home had decorated the front of the old waiting-room with evergreens and
sunflowers; and a sort of triumphal arch also being erected on the
arrival platform of the same floral pattern.

Who could have done it?

Why, no less a person than Jupp, whose black beard seemed all the
blacker, surrounding his good-humoured face, as he came out of the
office with Mary on his arm, and a young Master Jupp and another little
Mary toddling behind them--the whilom porter no longer dressed in grimy
velveteens, but in a smart black frock-coat, his Sunday best, while his
wife was equally spruce.

"I know it's ag'in the rules, miss," he explained to Conny; "but I see
the telegram as said Master Teddy'd be here this arternoon, God bless
him, and I'm thankful, that I am, he's restored safe and sound from the
bottom of the sea and Davy Jones's Locker, as we all on us thought. So
says I to Grigson, my old mate as was, who's in charge here now, and we
detarmined as how we'd make a kind of show like to welcome of him home."

"You're a right-down brick, Jupp!" said Doctor Jolly, shaking him by the
hand, while Mary kissed her former nurse children all round; and, while
they were all exchanging congratulations, up came the train rumbling and
whistling and panting and puffing into the station, the engine bearing a
Union Jack tied to the funnel, for Jupp's interest in two of the special
passengers being brought to Endleigh was well-known on the line.

Hardly had the train come to a standstill than out jumped Teddy, a
trifle taller and broader across the shoulde