So many times had his father
described it that the old place was printed like a map on his
mind, and was like a picture which kept its brightness even
after the image of his boyhood's home in Australia had become
faded and pale. With that mental picture to guide him he
believed that he could go to that angle by the porch where the
flycatchers bred every year and find their nest; where in the
hedge the blackberries were most abundant; where the elders
grew by the stream from which he could watch the moorhens and
watervoles; that he knew every fence, gate, and outhouse,
every room and passage in the old house. Through all his busy
years that picture never grew less beautiful, never ceased its
call, and at last, possessed of sufficient capital to yield
him a modest income for the rest of his life, he came home.
What he was going to do in England he did not consider. He
only knew that until he had satisfied the chief desire of his
heart and had looked upon the original of the picture he had
borne so long in his mind he could not rest nor make any plans
for the future.
He came first to London and found, on examining the map of
Hampshire, that the village of Thorpe (I will call it), where
he was born, is three miles from the nearest station, in the
southern part of the county. Undoubtedly it was Thorpe; that
was one of the few names of places his father had mentioned
which remained in his memory always associated with that vivid
image of the farm in his mind.
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