been thirty-five years younger, I could have cried--for pleasure.
Mother, I think, forgot those years perhaps. To her I was still in
overalls and wanted food. We drove, then, in comparative silence the
four miles behind the big pair of greys, the only remark that memory
credits me with being an enquiry about the identity of the coachman
whose dim outline I saw looming in the darkness just above me. The
lamplight showed one shoulder, one arm, one ear, the rest concealed; but
the way he drove was, of course, unmistakeable; slowly, more cautiously,
perhaps, but with the same flourish of the whip, the same air of untold
responsibility as ever. And, will you believe it, my chief memory of all
that scene of anticipated tenderness and home-emotion is the few words
he gave in reply to my enquiry and recognition when at length the
carriage stopped and I got out:

"Well, Brown, I'm glad to see you again. All well at home, I hope?"
followed by something of sympathy about his beloved horses.

He looked down sideways at me from the box, touching his cockade with
the long yellow whip in his thick, gloved hand. I can hear his warm,
respectful answer now; I can see the gleam of proud pleasure in his eye:

"Yes, sir, thank you, Sir Richard, and glad to see you back again, sir,
and with such success upon you."

I moved back to help our mother out. I remember thinking how calm, how
solid, how characteristically inarticulate it all was. Did I wish it
otherwise? I think not. Only there was something in me beating its wings
impatiently like a wild bird that felt the bars close round it. . . .
Mother, I realized, could not have said even what the old coachman had
said to save her life, and I remember wondering what would move her into