Having stumbled up the dark stairs, pushed back their private entrance, hung up his coat in the little hall, with a deliberate effort he shook off the suspicions that had, during the last moments, troubled him and prepared to meet his mother and sister.
Because he had a happy, easy and affectionate temperament absence always gilded his friends with gifts and qualities that their presence only too often denied.

His years abroad had given him a picture of his mother and sister that the few weeks of his return had already dimmed and obscured.

His mother's weekly letters had, during ten long years, built up an image of her as the dearest old lady in the world.

He had always, since a child, seen her in a detached way--his deep and permanent relations had been with his father--but those letters, of which he had now a deep and carefully cherished pile, gave him a most charming picture of her.

They had not been clever nor deep nor indeed very interesting, but they had been affectionate and tender with all the gentleness of the figure that he remembered sitting in its lace cap beside the fire.
After three weeks of home life he was compelled to confess that he did not in the least understand his mother.