Next day there was a fresh breeze, and they scudded before it on to Naples.
Here Paul seemed well enough to take train, and so arrive in England in
time for his birthday. He owed this to his mother, he and his father both
felt. She had been looking forward to it for so long, as at the time of his
coming of age the festivities had been interrupted by the sudden death of
his maternal grandfather, and the people had all been promised a
continuance of them on this, his twenty-third birthday. So, taking the
journey by sufficiently easy stages, sleeping three nights on the way, they
calculated to arrive on the eve of the event.

The Lady Henrietta would have everything in readiness for them, and her
darling Paul was not to be over-hurried. Only guests of the most congenial
kind had been invited, and such a number of nice girls!

The prospect was perfectly delightful, and ought to cause any young man
pure joy.

It was with a heart as heavy as lead Paul mounted the broad steps of his
ancestral home that summer evening, and was folded in his mother's
arms. (The guests were all fortunately dressing for dinner.)

Captain Grigsby had been persuaded to abandon his yacht and accompany them
too.

"Yes, I'll come, Charles," he said. "Getting too confoundedly hot in these
seas; besides, the boy will want more than one to see him through among
those cackling women."