"Dear me, Master Godfrey!" she said, "hadn't I heard that you were coming, I could never have been sure that it was you. Why, you've grown into a regular young gentleman in those foreign parts, and handsome, too, though I sez it. Who could have guessed that you are your father's son? Why, you'd make two of him. But there, they say that your mother was a good-looking lady and large built, though, as I never set eyes on her, I can't say for sure. Well, you must be tired after all this travelling in steamships and trains, so come into the dining-room and have some tea, for I have got the key to the sideboard."
He went, and, passing through the hall, left his alpenstock in the umbrella-stand. In due course the tea was produced, though for it he seemed to have little appetite. While he made pretence to eat the thick bread and butter, Mrs. Parsons told him the news, such as it was. Sir John was living in town and "flinging the money about, so it was said, not but what he had got lots to fling and plenty to catch it," she added meaningly. His poor, dear lady was dead, and "happy for her on the whole." Miss Isobel had "gone foreign," having, it was told, quarrelled with her father, and nothing had been heard of her since she went. She, too, had grown into a fine young lady.
That was all he gathered before Mrs. Parsons was obliged to depart to see to her business--except that she was exceedingly glad to see him.
Godfrey went up to his bedroom, which he found unprepared, for somebody else seemed to be sleeping there. While he was surveying it and wondering who this occupant might be, he heard his father in the hall asking the parlour-maid which of the young gentlemen had left that "ridiculous stick" in the stand. She replied that she did not know, whereupon the hard voice of his parent told her to take it away. Afterwards Godfrey found it thrown into the wood-house to be chopped up for firewood, though luckily before this happened.
By this time a kind of anger had seized him. It was true that he had not said by what train he was coming, for the reason that until he reached London he could not tell, but he had written that he was to arrive that afternoon, and surely some note might have been taken of the fact.
He went downstairs and confronted his father, who alone amid so much change seemed to be exactly the same. Mr. Knight shook him by the hand without any particular cordiality, and at once attacked him for not having intimated the hour of his arrival, saying that it was too late to advise the carrier to call at the station for his baggage and that a trap would have to be sent, which cost money.