He turned slowly away. He would go and look at The Rigs. His mother had
come to it as a bride. He had been born there. Though occupied by
strangers, it was the nearest he had to a home. The house in Prince's
Gate was well furnished, comfortable, smoothly run by efficient
servants, but only a house when all was said. He felt he would like to
creep into The Rigs, into the sitting-room where his mother had always
sat (the other larger rooms, the "good room" as it was called, was kept
for visitors and high days), and lay his tired body on the horsehair
arm-chair by the fireside. He could rest there, he thought. It was
impossible, of course. There would be no horsehair arm-chair, for
everything had been sold--and there was no mother.

But, anyway, he would go and look at it. There used to be primroses--but
this was autumn. Primroses come in the spring.

Thirty years--but The Rigs was not changed, at least not outwardly. Old
Mrs. Reid had loved the garden, and Great-aunt Alison, and Jean after
her, had carried on her work.

The little house looked just as Peter Reid remembered it.

He would go in and ask to see it, he told himself.

He would tell these Jardines that the house was his and he meant to live
in it himself. They wouldn't like it, but he couldn't help that.
Perhaps he would be able to persuade them to go almost at once. He would
make it worth their while.

He was just going to lift the latch of the gate when the front door