en sea, shining in the bay,
Did drown his dreadful yesterday.

Come home, come home, you million ghosts,
The honest years shall make amends,
The sun and moon shall be your hosts,
The everlasting hills your friends.
And some shall seek their mothers' faces,
And some shall run to trysting-places,
And some to towns, and others yet
Shall find great forests in their debt.
Oh, I would siege the golden coasts
Of space, and climb high heaven's dome,
So I might see those million ghosts
Come home.

Next day all the Family, including Mr. Russell and excepting Cousin
Gustus, came to breakfast with the intention of announcing that he or
she must go up to London by the next train. Mrs. Gustus, as ever,
spoke first.

"My conscience is pricking me. My work is calling me. I must go up
and see my old darlings in the Brown Borough. There is, I see, a
train at ten."

"I was just going to say something quite different to the same effect,"
said Kew. "I want to go up and whisper some secrets into the ear of
Cox. I want to have my hair cut. I want to buy this week's _Punch_. I
want some brown bootlaces. Life is empty for me unless I go up to town
this morning."

Mr. Russell, although he had tried the effect of all his excuses on his
Hound while dressing, was silent.

Mrs. Gustus was never less than half an hour too early for trains. This
might account for the excellence of her general information. She had
spent a large portion of her life at railway stations, which are, I
think, the centre of much wisdom. She and Kew started for the station
with mouths burnt by hurried coffee and toast-crumbs still unbrushed on
their waistcoats, forty minutes before the train was due. The protests of
Kew could be heard almost as far as the station, which was reached by a
walk of five minutes.

Cousin Gustus, Mr. Russell, and the convalescent Hound went to lie upon
the downs which climbed up straight from the back doorstep of the inn.
They were accompanied by a rug, a scarf, a sunshade, an overcoat, the
blessings of the landlady, and Cousin Gustus's diary. Nobody ever knew
what sort of matter filled Cousin Gustus's diary, nobody ever wanted to
know. It gave him grounds for claiming literary tastes, and his literary
tastes presumably made him marry a literary wife. So the diary had a
certain importance.

They spread out the rug in a little hollow, like a giant's footprint in
the downs, and sheep and various small flowers looked ov