“Sweet peas!” she murmured, and shut her eyes and thought of her garden, lying forsaken and desolate in the December frost.

Then she picked up the card.  On its back she read, in vigorous pencilling: 

“A ghost from the garden, sent by the ghost who tried to pick out the ‘little tune.’  There seem no other tunes in the world worth listening to.”

The next morning Mr. Timothy Rudd had many questions to ask his niece.  He sat comfortably among pillows and rugs, his breakfast brought in from the dining-car and served in his section by a waiter who was ready to show him every attention, to oblige the young lady whose smile he liked to win.

“You say they were all down, Sally?  This breakfast looks very nice, my dear—­I wish I could eat more of it.”  He laid down a half slice of toast and brushed his thin fingers.

“Uncle Timmy, are you sure you can’t manage just a little more?  Two spoonfuls of boiled egg, half a slice of toast, and a cup of coffee—­that’s no breakfast at all.  If I tell you all about it, won’t you eat just half the egg?”

“I’ll try, child, but—­really—­the old fellow who is wearing my clothes—­and not half big enough for them—­doesn’t seem to be able to summon much of an appetite.”

“If you don’t eat a good breakfast I shall feel more than ever guilty for not telling you they were coming—­though of course I didn’t dream of their all coming.  But if you had seen them you wouldn’t have slept a bit.”

“No, like enough I shouldn’t.  I’ll be satisfied if you tell me how they all looked.  The boys—­Max?”

“Very well, indeed—­he’s a trifle heavier than when I went away.  Joanna’s cooking is beginning to tell.  I think she pampers them, don’t you?—­I’m so grateful to her for that.”

“Alec?”

“Just as usual.  He was wearing a new overcoat, and looked a glass of fashion!  He says as long as Mr. Ferry lives in the country in the winter he’s willing to stand it there.  Isn’t it lucky they’re staying at least one more year?  By another winter the demands on Mr. Ferry in town may be so heavy he can’t take time to go back and forth.”

“Yes, I should say it was a very good thing for Alec to be as much under the influence of such a man as could be brought about, until he is where he can do his own thinking along the right lines.  How is my nephew Robert?”

“Oh, Bob’s cheeks are so round and red they look like a very large infant’s.  Dear Bobby—­think he misses us most.  He ran in and peeped into your berth while the train stood there.  I think he rather hoped to wake you.”

“Bless the lad—­I wish he had.”  Mr. Rudd took another spoonful of egg under the stimulus of the wish, forgetting that he had not meant to take up that spoon again.

“Mrs. Burnside and Jo looked their own dear selves—­every line of them.  It struck me afresh, as it always does when I see them after an interval, how beautifully yet quietly dressed they are, and how their photographs might be taken at any minute with delightful results.  ’Portrait of a Lady and her Daughter’ it would be.”  And Sally sighed a little sigh of a quite feminine sort, looking down at her own blue travelling attire and wondering how the same material would have looked if made up by Mrs. Burnside’s tailor.