"And then they'll spend the rest of our precious time connecting them up to people of the same name in England," said Marjorie.
"Exactly," agreed Leonard. "Aren't grown-up relations beastly?"
"Horrible," said Marjorie, "but they've been awfully decent about letting me have you all of these four days."
To put off the evil moment of arrival they stopped at every shop-window and stared in, their faces pressed close to the glass.
All the way home, with eyes that neither saw nor cared where they were going, they talked to each other of their childhood. The most trivial incidents became magnified and significant when exchanged.
"That's just the way I used to feel, that's just the way I used to feel," they kept repeating, over and over again. The sweet, misty memories of their happy, happy lives, came gliding back into consciousness. The thoughts and yearnings, the smells, the sights and sounds, all the serenity of the immaculate, long childhood days. Walking side by side in the reverent dimness, intensely conscious of each other, they had that mysterious sensation of having done this before, of living a second time. The world was transfigured; they were aware of measureless rapture brooding close about them in the twilight of which they were a part--a rapture, a sense of enchantment, that people are only conscious of as children or when they are in love or in dreams.
Finally, deliciously weary, and full of the languor of the summer night, they retraced their steps and took the two-penny tube.
They arrived home late. The family were at dinner.
"We've missed two courses," said Leonard gleefully; "the aunts must be raging."
"Good God!" answered Leonard, "I go to-morrow at five. Don't wear anything that will make them think we're going to sit round and converse with Aunt Hortense all the evening. I'm going up to say good-bye to the boy."
Marjorie found him there, stretched out on Herbert's little cot, completely covering the little mound under the pink coverlet.
"Don't you come near, Marjorie; I've got Leonard all to myself," cried Herbert, who, like all the others, was jealous of Marjorie, but did not scruple to show it.
"Ha-ha! Who's jealous now?" said Leonard, putting his head down on Herbert's. Marjorie lay down on the quilt at the foot of the bed. Her restless eyes watched a light from the driveway scurry across the bed and zig-zag over the faces of the two brothers. Like a sudden flame struck from a match it lit a metal object on the shelf over the bed. Ah, it looked grim and incongruous in that peaceful English nursery! Once it had been one among a golden sea of helmets, sweeping across a great plain like a river. The sun smote upon gleaming bayonets, passing with the eternal regularity of waves. Last autumn the world had shaken under the tread of the feet marching toward Paris.