But this programme was
not to be begun before evening - not till just before dinner,
indeed, at which meal the reassembled family were to sit
roseate, and the best wine, the modern fatted calf, should
flow for the prodigal's return.
Meanwhile he walked familiar streets, merry reminiscences
crowding round him, sad ones also, both with the same
surprising pathos. The keen frosty air; the low, rosy,
wintry sun; the castle, hailing him like an old acquaintance;
the names of friends on door-plates; the sight of friends
whom he seemed to recognise, and whom he eagerly avoided, in
the streets; the pleasant chant of the north-country accent;
the dome of St. George's reminding him of his last
penitential moments in the lane, and of that King of Glory
whose name had echoed ever since in the saddest corner of his
memory; and the gutters where he had learned to slide, and
the shop where he had bought his skates, and the stones on
which he had trod, and the railings in which he had rattled
his clachan as he went to school; and all those thousand and
one nameless particulars, which the eye sees without noting,
which the memory keeps indeed yet without knowing, and which,
taken one with another, build up for us the aspect of the
place that we call home: all these besieged him, as he went,
with both delight and sadness.
His first visit was for Houston, who had a house on Regent
Terrace, kept for him in old days by an aunt.
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