Edward Basingstoke, the home-coming was not without charm. The day before he had been welcomed as a guest; now he was welcomed as a friend, one who had taken Tommy for an outing and spent money on him[19] like water. Any one could see that from the parcels the child had his arms full of.

[19]

Robert in the stable, hearing the return, and heartened by the unmistakable attitude of the family, loosened Charles from the taut chain at whose end he had choked all day, and sent him flying like a large white bullet into the bar, where his master was standing. Charles knocked over a table and three glasses, trod on the edge of a spittoon and upset it, and the landlord said it didn't matter! Could any reception have been more warmly welcoming?

It charmed Edward so much that he said, "When Tommy's face is washed, might he have tea with me to finish up the day?"

And this, too, happened. And after tea, when Charles had been partially calmed by five whole buns, eaten in five eager mouthfuls, they undid the parcels, and Tommy reveled in the tools and metals, the wood, the canvas, the dozen other things he knew neither the names nor the uses of. And when it was time to say good night and they had said it, Tommy wanted to say something else. He stood by the parlor door, shuffling his boots and looking with blue, adoring eyes at the stranger.

"I say," he said.

"Well, what do you say?"

"I say," was still all that Tommy said.

[20]

[20]

"Yes, I hear you do. But what?"

"I'm right-down glad you come here to stay, instead of going on to Wilmington, like what you might have," was the most Tommy could do. Then he added, after a fierce, brief struggle between affection and shyness: "I do take it very kind, sir—and the peppermints, and all. Good night, sir."

It was the happiest day Edward had spent since he left Crewe.

And next day they began to make the aeroplane. I do not know how toy aeroplanes are made. There may be a hundred ways of 

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