Jack advanced toward her with a smile.
"Why, Jack!" she exclaimed with a scream of delight, "is it you ?" and the good woman threw her arms round his neck and kissed him as if he had been her own son.
"Of course we got your letters," she said, "telling us how you had been made an officer and then a captain.

The last letter we had from you was from Italy; telling us about that great sea fight, and that you were coming home, but that's eight months ago.

We knew you were with my Lord Peterborough, and we saw in the Intelligencer about his being in Germany, and last week they said he had come home.

We were talking about you only yesterday, and wondering whether you would come down to see us, and whether you would know us now you had grown such a fine gentleman, and being written about in Lord Peterborough's dispatches, and accustomed to all sorts of grand society." "You knew I would," Jack said; "why, where should I go if not here?
And Alice is quite well, I hope, and grown quite a woman." "Not quite a woman yet, Jack, but getting on." She opened the door and called Alice, and in a minute the girl ran down.

Her mother saw that she had guessed who the caller was, for she had smoothed her hair and put on a bright ribbon which her mother had not seen for three years, and which Jack himself had given her.