ace--just the sort of "home" of Geoff's
wildest dreams.

"If we were all living there together, now," he used to say to
himself--"mamma quite well and not worried about money--Elsa and Frances
would be so happy, we'd never squabble, and Vicky----" But at the idea
of _Vicky's_ happiness, words failed him.

It was, it must be allowed, a come-down from such beautiful fancies, to
have to hurry back to the farm to harness old Dapple and jog off to the
station with the milk. For even on Sundays people can't do without
eating and drinking.

[Illustration: GEOFF STOOD STILL IN AMAZEMENT.]

One Sunday a queer thing happened. He was just turning home, and passing
the lodge at the principal entrance to the Hall, as it was called, when
behind the thick evergreen hedge at one side of the little garden he
heard voices. They were speaking too low for him to distinguish the
words; but one voice sounded to him very like Eames's. It might be so,
for the farmer and the lodge-keeper were friends. And Geoff would have
walked on without thinking anything of it, had not a sudden exclamation
caught his ear--"Hoot-toot, hoot-toot! I tell you----" But instantly the
voice dropped. It sounded as if some one had held up a warning finger.
Geoff stood still in amazement. _Could_ Great-Uncle Hoot-Toot be there?
It seemed too impossible. But the boy's heart beat fast with a vague
feeling of expectation and apprehension mixed together.

"If he has come here accidentally, he must not see me," he said to
himself; and he hurried down the road as fast as he could, determined to
hasten to the station and back before the old gentleman, if it were he,
could get there. But to his surprise, on entering the farm-yard, the
first person to meet him was Mr. Eames himself.

"What's the matter, my lad?" he said good humouredly. "Thou'st staring
as if I were a ghost."

"I thought--I thought," stammered Geoff, "that I saw--no, heard your
voice just now at the lodge."

Eames laughed.

"But I couldn't be in two places at once, could I? Well, get off with
you to the station."

All was as usual of a Sunday there. No one about, no passengers by the
up-train--only the milk-cans; and Geoff, as he drove slowly home again,
almost persuaded himself that the familiar "Hoot-toot, hoot-toot!" must
have been altogether his own fancy.

But had he been at the little railway-station again an hour or two
later, he would have had reason to change his opinion. A passenger did