As he thrust his head out of the window, each well-remembered landmark gave him the delicious sensation of meeting again an old friend.

"Ah! there's the white bridge, and there's the canal, and the stile; and _there_ runs the river, and there's Velvet Lawn.

Hurrah! here we are." And springing out of the train before it had well stopped, he had shaken hands heartily with the old coachman, who was expecting him, and jumped up into the carriage in a moment.
Through the lanes he knew so well, by whose hedgerows he had so often plucked sorrel and wild roses; past the old church with its sleeping churchyard; through, the quiet village, where every ten yards he met old acquaintances who looked pleased to see him, and whom he greeted with glad smiles and nods of recognition; past the Latin school, from which came murmurs and voices as of yore (what a man he felt himself now by comparison!);--by the old Roman camp, where he had imagined such heroic things when he was a child; through all the scenes so rich with the memories and associations of his happy childhood, they flew along; and now they had entered the avenue, and Eric was painfully on the look-out.
Yes! there they were all three--Mrs.Trevor, and Fanny, and Vernon, on the mound at the end of the avenue; and the younger ones ran to meet him.

It was a joyous meeting; he gave Fanny a hearty kiss, and put his arm round Vernon's neck, and then held him in front to have a look at him.
"How tall you've grown, Verny, and how well you look," he said, gazing proudly at him; and indeed the boy was a brother to be justly proud of.
And Vernon quite returned the admiration as he saw the healthy glow of Eric's features, and the strong graceful development of his limbs.
And so they quickly joined Mrs.Trevor, who embraced her nephew with a mother's love: and, amid all that nameless questioning of delightful trifles, that "blossoming vein" of household talk, which gives such an incommunicable charm to the revisiting of home, they all three turned into the house, where Eric, hungry with his travels, did ample justice to the "jolly spread" prepared for him, luxurious beyond anything he had seen for his last year at school.

When he and Vernon went up to their room at night--the same little room in which they slept on the night when they first had met--they marked their heights on the door again, which showed Eric that in the last year he had grown two inches, a fact which he pointed out to Vernon with no little exultation.