might. Nothing mattered, absolutely nothing, except for them to go—to go at once, and never to return.
"You'll say good-by to them all for me?" he begged, "I—I may be called away for a few days by any post. But please say my good-bys to them all: your husband—and Basil—and to your daughter. And, Mrs. Gregory, young Carruthers is staying here, you said. I'll look him up as soon as I know you've sailed, and I'll look after him a bit, be a sort of parson his-man-Friday, if the boy'll let me."
"Tom?—Tom's a nice boy—I think," Mrs. Gregory said a trifle hesitantly.
"I think so too," the priest said cordially.
She was going into the city when she left him, and he went almost to the level with her, walking beside her chair.
"Remember," he said at parting, "you'll go at once. And you'll none of you come back—ever."
"We will go at once," she told him earnestly. "And we will not come back." But to that last there was a small reservation at the far back of her mind. She thought it just possible that Hilda might come back—some day. Not that Hilda particularly liked China; she did not—she greatly preferred Kensington. But, if Holman thought well of Tom Carruthers, it was probable that he—now that Basil was definitely out of the Hong Kong running—might be permanently attached to that branch, and ultimately its head.
And with one slight deviation, Mrs. Gregory kept the promise she made John Bradley as he stood bare-headed beside her chair. For they did sail—almost at once. And only one of them ever came back—Hilda.
The long voyage home differed in nothing from all other such voyages. Not one voyage in ten thousand
