The good people pulled themselves together. They felt that it could be done. They felt themselves quite equal to doing the honours of the double event, and no one who knew them would have ventured to suggest that the confidence which they had in their own powers was misplaced.
There was very little organization in the matter--very little was required. Half-a-dozen house painters prepared as many lengths of canvas containing the simple manly English words "Welcome Home," and half-a-dozen young gentlemen in the drapery line got together some slices of bunting which they shaped and glued on to rollers, so that they became bannerets in a moment. For the necessary bouquets they knew that they could depend upon the Manor gardeners; so the arrangements for the demonstration did not occupy much time or thought. The musical accompaniments were suggested by the Town Band, and then it was that Mr. Mozart Tutt, Mr. Morley Quorn, and the other members of the Framsby Glee and Madrigal Meistersingers had a chance of putting into practical form their recognition of what Mrs. Wingfield had done for them upon one occasion, for they prepared some choice serenade music with which to greet the lady and her husband in the course of the night.
Someone suggested that they should practise a chorus beginning "See, the Conquering Hero Comes" for the railway station; but Mr. Tutt was too wise to enter into any contract that would involve competition with the band and the cheers of the public.
And on this scale the home-coming of Mr. and Mrs. Wingfield was arranged for; and as neither of them had been informed of the intention of Framsby, they were rather surprised when, late in the evening, their train steamed into the station, and slowed down into an atmosphere of yells. Beyond the barrier there was a sea of faces whose waves were caps with an occasional straw hat, and here and there a bowler--all were in the air undulating fitfully, and lapping the base of a headland bearing the inscription "Welcome Home."
"Gloriana!" cried Jack. "Is this for us? And I fancied we had been done with all that sort of thing until the next general election."
"Of course it's for us," said Priscilla. "I had no idea that Framsby would rise equal to the occasion."