Harvey was waiting for them.
After violent emotion most people and all boys demand food.

They feasted the returned prodigal behind drawn curtains, cut off in their great happiness, while the trains roared in and out around them.

Harvey ate, drank, and enlarged on his adventures all in one breath, and when he had a hand free his mother fondled it.

His voice was thickened with living in the open, salt air; his palms were rough and hard, his wrists dotted with the marks of gurry-sores; and a fine full flavour of cod-fish hung round rubber boots and blue jersey.
The father, well used to judging men, looked at him keenly.

He did not know what enduring harm the boy might have taken.