Rosamund sat for a few minutes almost motionless, with the slip of paper lying in her lap; then the breeze came lightly, as if curious, and blew it away.  Robin saw it and ran.

“I’ll catch it, mummie.  You see!  I’ll catch it!”

The little brown legs were amazingly swift, but the telegram was elusive because the breeze was naughty.  When Robin ran up to his mother holding it out he was almost breathless.

“Here it is, mummie.”

His blue eyes and his voice held triumph.

“I said I would, and I did!”

Rosamund put her arm round him.

“Who do you think sent this?”

“I dunno.”

“Daddy sent it.”

Robin’s eyes became round.

“Daddy!  What for?”

“To tell us he’s coming home.”

A deeply serious expression came to Robin’s face.

“Have I growed much?”

“Yes, a great deal.”

“Will daddy see it?”

“Yes, I’m sure he will directly he comes.”

Robin seemed relieved.

“Is daddy coming here?”

“Yes.”

“Is he goin’ to live here with us?”

“We shall see about all that when he comes.”

Annie, evidently still thinking about her cap, reappeared on the garden path.

“The Dean to see you, ma’am.”

Rosamund got up, gave Robin a long kiss on the freckles and said: 

“Robin, I believe the Dean has come about Mr. Thrush.”

“Does he know Mr. Thrush?”

“Not yet.  I’ll tell you something presently.”

And she went slowly into the house.  Was a scheme of hers coming to fruition just when——?  She tried to close her mind to an approaching thought.

CHAPTER V

On the 7th of October the C.I.V. sailed from South Africa for England, on the 19th of October they made St. Vincent; on the 23rd Dion again looked over the sea at the dreaming hills of Madeira.  The sight of these hills made him realize the change brought about in him by the work he had done in South Africa.  As he gazed at them he suddenly and sharply remembered the man who had gazed at them nine months before, a man who was gathering together determination, who was silently making preparations for progress, or for what he thought of as progress.  Those hills then had seemed to be calling to him out of the mists of heat, and to himself he had seemed to be defying them, to be thrusting their voices from him.  For were they not the hills of a land where the lotus bloomed, where a weariness bred of stagnant delights wrapped men in a garment of Nessus, steeped in a subtle poison which drew from them all their energies, which brought them not pain but an inertia more deadly to the soul than pain?  Now they had no power over him.  He did not need to defy them, because he had gained in strength.  Ere they vanished from his eyes over the sea he remembered another Island rising out of waters that gleamed with gold.  How far off now seemed to him that evening when he had looked on it as he traveled to Greece!  How much he had left behind on the way of his life!