Robert Michael Ballantyne
Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished: A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure
Chapter Twenty Five.
Canada again—and Surprising News
It is most refreshing to those who have been long cooped up in a city to fly on the wings of steam to the country and take refuge among the scents of flowers and fields and trees. We have said this, or something like it, before, and remorselessly repeat it—for it is a grand truism.
Let us then indulge ourselves a little with a glance at the farm of Brankly in Canada.
Lake Ontario, with its expanse of boundless blue, rolls like an ocean in the far distance. We can see it from the hill-top where the sweet-smelling red-pines grow. At the bottom of the hill lies Brankly itself, with its orchards and homestead and fields of golden grain, and its little river, with the little saw-mill going as pertinaciously as if it, like the river, had resolved to go on for ever. Cattle are there, sheep are there, horses and wagons are there, wealth and prosperity are there, above all happiness is there, because there also dwells the love of God.
It is a good many years, reader, since you and I were last here. Then, the farm buildings and fences were brand-new. Now, although of course not old, they bear decided traces of exposure to the weather. But these marks only give compactness of look and unity of tone to everything, improving the appearance of the place vastly.
The fences, which at first looked blank and staring, as if wondering how they had got there, are now more in harmony with the fields they enclose. The plants which at first struggled as if unwillingly on the dwelling-house, now cling to it and climb about it with the affectionate embrace of old friends. Everything is improved—Well, no, not everything. Mr Merryboy’s legs have not improved. They will not move as actively as they were wont to do. They will not go so far, and they demand the assistance of a stick. But Mr Merryboy’s spirit has improved—though it was pretty good before, and his tendency to universal philanthropy has increased to such an extent that the people of the district have got into a way of sending their bad men and boys to work on his farm in order that they may become good!
Mrs Merryboy, however, has improved in every way, and is more blooming than ever, as well as a trifle stouter, but Mrs Merryboy senior, although advanced spiritually, has degenerated a little physically. The few teeth that kept her nose and chin apart having disappeared, her mouth has also vanished, though there is a decided mark which tells where it was—especially when she speaks or smiles. The hair on her forehead has become as pure white as the winter snows of Canada. Wrinkles on her visage have become the rule, not the exception, but as they all run into comical twists, and play in the forms of humour, they may, perhaps, be regarded as a physical improvement. She is stone deaf now, but this also may be put to the credit side of her account, for it has rendered needless those awkward efforts to speak loud and painful attempts to hear which used to trouble the family in days gone by. It is quite clear, however, when you look into granny’s coal-black eyes, that if she were to live to the age of Methuselah she will never be blind, nor ill-natured, nor less pleased with herself, her surroundings, and the whole order of things created!
But who are these that sit so gravely and busily engaged with breakfast as though they had not the prospect of another meal that year? Two young men and a young girl. One young man is broad and powerful though short, with an incipient moustache and a fluff of whisker. The other is rather tall, slim, and gentlemanly, and still beardless. The girl is little, neat, well-made, at the budding period of life, brown-haired, brown-eyed, round, soft—just such a creature as one feels disposed to pat on the head and say, “My little pet!”
Why, these are two “waifs” and a “stray!” Don’t you know them? Look again. Is not the stout fellow our friend Bobby Frog, the slim one Tim Lumpy, and the girl Martha Mild? But who, in all London, would believe that these were children who had bean picked out of the gutter? Nobody—except those good Samaritans who had helped to pick them up, and who could show you the photographs of what they once were and what they now are.
Mr Merryboy, although changed a little as regards legs, was not in the least deteriorated as to lungs. As Granny, Mrs Merryboy, and the young people sat at breakfast he was heard at an immense distance off, gradually making his way towards the house.
“Something seems to be wrong with father this morning, I think,” said Mrs Merryboy, junior, listening.
Granny, observing the action, pretended to listen, and smiled.
“He’s either unusually jolly or unusually savage—a little more tea, mother,” said Tim Lumpy, pushing in his cup.
Tim, being father-and-motherless, called Mr Merryboy father and the wife mother. So did Martha, but Bobby Frog, remembering those whom he had left at home, loyally declined, though he did not object to call the elder Mrs Merryboy granny.
“Something for good or evil must have happened,” said Bobby, laying down his knife and fork as the growling sound drew nearer.
At last the door flew open and the storm burst in. And we may remark that Mr Merryboy’s stormy nature was, if possible, a little more obtrusive than it used to be, for whereas in former days his toes and heels did most of the rattling-thunder business, the stick now came into play as a prominent creator of din—not only when flourished by hand, but often on its own account and unexpectedly, when propped clumsily in awkward places.
“Hallo! good people all, how are ’ee? morning—morning. Boys, d’ee know that the saw-mill’s come to grief?”
“No, are you in earnest, father?” cried Tim, jumping up.
“In earnest! Of course I am. Pretty engineers you are. Sawed its own bed in two, or burst itself. Don’t know which, and what’s more I don’t care. Come, Martha, my bantam chicken, let’s have a cup of tea. Bother that stick, it can’t keep its legs much better than myself. How are you, mother? Glorious weather, isn’t it?”
Mr Merryboy ignored deafness. He continued to speak to his mother just as though she heard him.
And she continued to nod and smile, and make-believe to hear with more demonstration of face and cap than ever. After all, her total loss of hearing made little difference, her sentiments being what Bobby Frog in his early days would have described in the words, “Wot’s the hodds so long as you’re ’appy?”
But Bobby had now ceased to drop or misapply his aitches—though he still had some trouble with his R’s.
As he was chief engineer of the saw-mill, having turned out quite a mechanical genius, he ran down to the scene of disaster with much concern on hearing the old gentleman’s report.
And, truly, when he and Tim reached the picturesque spot where, at the water’s edge among fine trees and shrubs, the mill stood clearly reflected in its own dam, they found that the mischief done was considerable. The machinery, by which the frame with its log to be sawn was moved along quarter-inch by quarter-inch at each stroke, was indeed all right, but it had not been made self-regulating. The result was that, on one of the attendant workmen omitting to do his duty, the saw not only ripped off a beautiful plank from a log, but continued to cross-cut the end of the heavy framework, and then proceeded to cut the iron which held the log in its place. The result, of course, was that the iron refused to be cut, and savagely revenged itself by scraping off, flattening down, turning up, and otherwise damaging, the teeth of the saw!
“H’m! that comes of haste,” muttered Bob, as he surveyed the wreck. “If I had taken time to make the whole affair complete before setting the mill to work, this would not have happened.”
“Never mind, Bob, we must learn by experience, you know,” said Tim, examining the damage done with a critical eye. “Luckily, we have a spare saw in the store.”
“Run and fetch it,” said Bob to the man in charge of the mill, whose carelessness had caused the damage, and who stared silently at his work with a look of horrified resignation.
When he was gone Bob and Tim threw off their coats, rolled up their sleeves to the shoulder, and set to work with a degree of promptitude and skill which proved them to be both earnest and capable workmen.
The first thing to be done was to detach the damaged saw from its frame.
“There,” said Bob, as he flung it down, “you won’t use your teeth again on the wrong subject for some time to come. Have we dry timber heavy enough to mend the frame, Tim?”
“Plenty—more than we want.”
“Well, you go to work on it while I fix up the new saw.”
To work the two went accordingly—adjusting, screwing, squaring, sawing, planing, mortising, until the dinner-bell called them to the house.
“So soon!” exclaimed Bob; “dinner is a great bother when a man is very busy.”
“D’ye think so, Bob? Well, now, I look on it as a great comfort—specially when you’re hungry.”
“Ah! but that’s because you are greedy, Tim. You always were too fond o’ your grub.”
“Come, Bob, no slang. You know that mother doesn’t like it. By the way, talkin’ of mothers, is it on Wednesday or Thursday that you expect your mother?”
“Thursday, my boy,” replied Bob, with a bright look. “Ha! that will be a day for me!”
“So it will, Bob, I’m glad for your sake,” returned Tim with a sigh, which was a very unusual expression of feeling for him. His friend at once understood its significance.
“Tim, my boy, I’m sorry for you. I wish I could split my mother in two and give you half of her.”
“Yes,” said Tim, somewhat absently, “it is sad to have not one soul in the world related to you.”
“But there are many who care for you as much as if they were relations,” said Bob, taking his friend’s arm as they approached the house.
“Come along, come along, youngsters,” shouted Mr Merryboy from the window, “the dinner’s gettin’ cold, and granny’s gettin’ in a passion. Look sharp. If you knew what news I have for you you’d look sharper.”
“What news, sir?” asked Bob, as they sat down to a table which did not exactly “groan” with viands—it was too strong for that—but which was heavily weighted therewith.
“I won’t tell you till after dinner—just to punish you for being late; besides, it might spoil your appetite.”
“But suspense is apt to spoil appetite, father, isn’t it?” said Tim, who, well accustomed to the old farmer’s eccentricities, did not believe much in the news he professed to have in keeping.
“Well, then, you must just lose your appetites, for I won’t tell you,” said Mr Merryboy firmly. “It will do you good—eh! mother, won’t a touch of starvation improve them, bring back the memory of old times—eh?”
The old lady, observing that her son was addressing her, shot forth such a beam of intelligence and goodwill that it was as though a gleam of sunshine had burst into the room.
“I knew you’d agree with me—ha! ha! you always do, mother,” cried the farmer, flinging his handkerchief at a small kitten which was sporting on the floor and went into fits of delight at the attention.
After dinner the young men were about to return to their saw-mill when Mr Merryboy called them back.
“What would you say, boys, to hear that Sir Richard Brandon, with a troop of emigrants, is going to settle somewhere in Canada?”
“I would think he’d gone mad, sir, or changed his nature,” responded Bob.
“Well, as to whether he’s gone mad or not I can’t tell—he may have changed his nature, who knows? That’s not beyond the bounds of possibility. Anyway, he is coming. I’ve got a letter from a friend of mine in London who says he read it in the papers. But perhaps you may learn more about it in that.”
He tossed a letter to Bob, who eagerly seized it.
“From sister Hetty,” he cried, and tore it open.
The complete unity and unanimity of this family was well illustrated by the fact, that Bob began to read the letter aloud without asking leave and without apology.
“Dearest Bob,” it ran, “you will get this letter only a mail before our arrival. I had not meant to write again, but cannot resist doing so, to give you the earliest news about it. Sir Richard has changed his mind! You know, in my last, I told you he had helped to assist several poor families from this quarter—as well as mother and me, and Matty. He is a real friend to the poor, for he doesn’t merely fling coppers and old clothes at them, but takes trouble to find out about them, and helps them in the way that seems best for each. It’s all owing to that sweet Miss Di, who comes so much about here that she’s almost as well-known as Giles Scott the policeman, or our missionary. By the way, Giles has been made an Inspector lately, and has got no end of medals and a silver watch, and other testimonials, for bravery in saving people from fires, and canals, and cart wheels, and—he’s a wonderful man is Giles, and they say his son is to be taken into the force as soon as he’s old enough. He’s big enough and sensible enough already, and looks twice his age. After all, if he can knock people down, and take people up, and keep order, what does it matter how young he is?
“But I’m wandering, I always do wander, Bob, when I write to you! Well, as I was saying, Sir Richard has changed his mind and has resolved to emigrate himself, with Miss Di and a whole lot of friends and work-people. He wants, as he says, to establish a colony of like-minded people, and so you may be sure that all who have fixed to go with him are followers of the Lord Jesus—and not ashamed to say so. As I had already taken our passages in the Amazon steamer—”
“The Amazon!” interrupted Mr Merryboy, with a shout, “why, that steamer has arrived already!”
“So it has,” said Bob, becoming excited; “their letter must have been delayed, and they must have come by the same steamer that brought it; why, they’ll be here immediately!”
“Perhaps to-night!” exclaimed Mrs Merryboy.
“Oh! how nice!” murmured Martha, her great brown eyes glittering with joy at the near prospect of seeing that Hetty about whom she had heard so much.
“Impossible!” said Tim Lumpy, coming down on them all with his wet-blanket of common-sense. “They would never come on without dropping us a line from Quebec, or Montreal, to announce their arrival.”
“That’s true, Tim,” said Mr Merryboy, “but you’ve not finished the letter, Bob—go on. Mother, mother, what a variety of faces you are making!”
This also was true, for old Mrs Merryboy, seeing that something unusual was occurring, had all this time been watching the various speakers with her coal-black eyes, changing aspect with their varied expressions, and wrinkling her visage up into such inexpressible contortions of sympathetic good-will, that she really could not have been more sociable if she had been in full possession and use of her five senses.
“As I had already,” continued Bob, reading, “taken our passages in the Amazon steamer, Sir Richard thought it best that we should come on before, along with his agent, who goes to see after the land, so that we might have a good long stay with you, and dear Mr and Mrs Merryboy, who have been so kind to you, before going on to Brandon—which, I believe, is the name of the place in the backwoods where Sir Richard means us all to go to. I don’t know exactly where it is—and I don’t know anybody who does, but that’s no matter. Enough for mother, and Matty, and me to know that it’s within a few hundred miles of you, which is very different from three thousand miles of an ocean!
“You’ll also be glad to hear that Mr Twitter with all his family is to join this band. It quite puts me in mind of the story of the Pilgrim Fathers, that I once heard in dear Mr Holland’s meeting hall, long ago. I wish he could come too, and all his people with him, and all the ladies from the Beehive. Wouldn’t that be charming! But, then,—who would be left to look after London? No, it is better that they should remain at home.
“Poor Mr Twitter never quite got the better of his fire, you see, so he sold his share in his business, and is getting ready to come. His boys and girls will be a great help to him in Canada, instead of a burden as they have been in London—the younger ones I mean, of course, for Molly, and Sammy, and Willie have been helping their parents for a long time past. I don’t think Mrs Twitter quite likes it, and I’m sure she’s almost breaking her heart at the thought of leaving George Yard. It is said that their friends Mrs Loper, Mrs Larrabel, Stickler, and Crackaby, want to join, but I rather think Sir Richard isn’t very keen to have them. Mr Stephen Welland is also coming. One of Sir Richard’s friends, Mr Brisbane I think, got him a good situation in the Mint—that’s where all the money is coined, you know—but, on hearing of this expedition to Canada, he made up his mind to go there instead; so he gave up the Mint—very unwillingly, however, I believe, for he wanted very much to go into the Mint. Now, no more at present from your loving and much hurried sister, (for I’m in the middle of packing), Hetty.”
Now, while Bob Frog was in the act of putting Hetty’s letter in his pocket, a little boy was seen on horseback, galloping up to the door.
He brought a telegram addressed to “Mr Robert Frog.” It was from Montreal, and ran thus: “We have arrived, and leave this on Tuesday forenoon.”
“Why, they’re almost here now,” cried Bob.
“Harness up, my boy, and off you go—not a moment to lose!” cried Mr Merryboy, as Bob dashed out of the room. “Take the bays, Bob,” he added in a stentorian voice, thrusting his head out of the window, “and the biggest wagon. Don’t forget the rugs!”
Ten minutes later, and Bob Frog, with Tim Lumpy beside him, was driving the spanking pair of bays to the railway station.
Chapter Twenty Six.
Happy Meetings
It was to the same railway station as that at which they had parted from their guardian and been handed over to Mr Merryboy years before that Bobby Frog now drove. The train was not due for half an hour.
“Tim,” said Bob after they had walked up and down the platform for about five minutes, “how slowly time seems to fly when one’s in a hurry!”
“Doesn’t it?” assented Tim, “crawls like a snail.”
“Tim,” said Bob, after ten minutes had elapsed, “what a difficult thing it is to wait patiently when one’s anxious!”
“Isn’t it!” assented Tim, “so hard to keep from fretting and stamping.”
“Tim,” said Bob, after twenty minutes had passed, “I wonder if the two or three dozen people on this platform are all as uncomfortably impatient as I am.”
“Perhaps they are,” said Tim, “but certainly possessed of more power to restrain themselves.”
“Tim,” said Bob, after the lapse of five-and-twenty minutes, “did you ever hear of such a long half-hour since you were born?”
“Never,” replied the sympathetic Tim, “except once long ago when I was starving, and stood for about that length of time in front of a confectioner’s window till I nearly collapsed and had to run away at last for fear I should smash in the glass and feed.”
“Tim, I’ll take a look round and see that the bays are all right.”
“You’ve done that four times already, Bob.”
“Well, I’ll do it five times, Tim. There’s luck, you know, in odd numbers.”
There was a sharpish curve on the line close to the station. While Bob Frog was away the train, being five minutes before its time, came thundering round the curve and rushed alongside the platform.
Bob ran back of course and stood vainly trying to see the people in each carriage as it went past.
“Oh! what a sweet eager face!” exclaimed Tim, gazing after a young girl who had thrust her head out of a first-class carriage.
“Let alone sweet faces, Tim—this way. The third classes are all behind.”
By this time the train had stopped, and great was the commotion as friends and relatives met or said good-bye hurriedly, and bustled into and out of the carriages—commotion which was increased by the cheering of a fresh band of rescued waifs going to new homes in the west, and the hissing of the safety valve which took it into its head at that inconvenient moment to let off superfluous steam. Some of the people rushing about on that platform and jostling each other would have been the better for safety valves! poor Bobby Frog was one of these.
“Not there!” he exclaimed despairingly, as he looked into the last carriage of the train.
“Impossible,” said Tim, “we’ve only missed them; walk back.”
They went back, looking eagerly into carriage after carriage—Bob even glancing under the seats in a sort of wild hope that his mother might be hiding there, but no one resembling Mrs Frog was to be seen.
A commotion at the front part of the train, more pronounced than the general hubbub, attracted their attention.
“Oh! where is he—where is he?” cried a female voice, which was followed up by the female herself, a respectable elderly woman, who went about the platform scattering people right and left in a fit of temporary insanity, “where is my Bobby, where is he, I say? Oh! why won’t people git out o’ my way? Git out o’ the way,” (shoving a sluggish man forcibly), “where are you, Bobby? Bo–o–o–o–o–by!”
It was Mrs Frog! Bob saw her, but did not move. His heart was in his throat! He could not move. As he afterwards said, he was struck all of a heap, and could only stand and gaze with his hands clasped.
“Out o’ the way, young man!” cried Mrs Frog, brushing indignantly past him, in one of her erratic bursts. “Oh! Bobby—where has that boy gone to?”
“Mother!” gasped Bob.
“Who said that?” cried Mrs Frog, turning round with a sharp look, as if prepared to retort “you’re another” on the shortest notice.
“Mother!” again said Bob, unclasping his hands and holding them out.
Mrs Frog had hitherto, regardless of the well-known effect of time, kept staring at heads on the level which Bobby’s had reached when he left home. She now looked up with a startled expression.
“Can it—is it—oh! Bo—” she got no further, but sprang forward and was caught and fervently clasped in the arms of her son.
Tim fluttered round them, blowing his nose violently though quite free from cold in the head—which complaint, indeed, is not common in those regions.
Hetty, who had lost her mother in the crowd, now ran forward with Matty. Bob saw them, let go his mother, and received one in each arm—squeezing them both at once to his capacious bosom.
Mrs Frog might have fallen, though that was not probable, but Tim made sure of her by holding out a hand which the good woman grasped, and laid her head on his breast, quite willing to make use of him as a convenient post to lean against, while she observed the meeting of the young people with a contented smile.
Tim observed that meeting too, but with very different feelings, for the “sweet eager face” that he had seen in the first-class carriage belonged to Hetty! Long-continued love to human souls had given to her face a sweetness—and sympathy with human spirits and bodies in the depths of poverty, sorrow, and deep despair had invested it with a pitiful tenderness and refinement—which one looks for more naturally among the innocent in the higher ranks of life.
Poor Tim gazed unutterably, and his heart went on in such a way that even Mrs Frog’s attention was arrested. Looking up, she asked if he was took bad.
“Oh! dear no. By no means,” said Tim, quickly.
“You’re tremblin’ so,” she returned, “an’ it ain’t cold—but your colour’s all right. I suppose it’s the natur’ o’ you Canadians. But only to think that my Bobby,” she added, quitting her leaning-post, and again seizing her son, “that my Bobby should ’ave grow’d up, an’ his poor mother knowed nothink about it! I can’t believe my eyes—it ain’t like Bobby a bit, yet some’ow I know it’s ’im! Why, you’ve grow’d into a gentleman, you ’ave.”
“And you have grown into a flatterer,” said Bob, with a laugh. “But come, mother, this way; I’ve brought the wagon for you. Look after the luggage, Tim—Oh! I forgot. This is Tim, Hetty—Tim Lumpy. You remember, you used to see us playing together when we were city Arabs.”
Hetty looked at Tim, and, remembering Bobby’s strong love for jesting, did not believe him. She smiled, however, and bowed to the tall good-looking youth, who seemed unaccountably shy and confused as he went off to look after the luggage.
“Here is the wagon; come along,” said Bob, leading his mother out of the station.
“The waggin, boy; I don’t see no waggin.”
“Why, there, with the pair of bay horses.”
“You don’t mean the carridge by the fence, do you?”
“Well, yes, only we call them wagons here.”
“An’ you calls the ’osses bay ’osses, do you?”
“Well now, I would call ’em beautiful ’osses, but I suppose bay means the same thing here. You’ve got strange ways in Canada.”
“Yes, mother, and pleasant ways too, as I hope you shall find out ere long. Get in, now. Take care! Now then, Hetty—come, Matty. How difficult to believe that such a strapping young thing can be the squalling Matty I left in London!”
Matty laughed as she got in, by way of reply, for she did not yet quite believe in her big brother.
“Do you drive, Tim; I’ll stay inside,” said Bob.
In another moment the spanking bays were whirling the wagon over the road to Brankly Farm at the rate of ten miles an hour.
Need it be said that the amiable Merryboys did not fail of their duty on that occasion? That Hetty and Matty took violently to brown-eyed Martha at first sight, having heard all about her from Bob long ago—as she of them; that Mrs Merryboy was, we may say, one glowing beam of hospitality; that Mrs Frog was, so to speak, one blazing personification of amazement, which threatened to become chronic—there was so much that was contrary to previous experience and she was so slow to take it in; that Mr Merryboy became noisier than ever, and that, what between his stick and his legs, to say nothing of his voice, he managed to create in one day hubbub enough to last ten families for a fortnight; that the domestics and the dogs were sympathetically joyful; that even the kitten gave unmistakeable evidences of unusual hilarity—though some attributed the effect to surreptitiously-obtained cream; and, finally, that old granny became something like a Chinese image in the matter of nodding and gazing and smirking and wrinkling, so that there seemed some danger of her terminating her career in a gush of universal philanthropy—need all this be said, we ask? We think not; therefore we won’t say it.
But it was not till Bob Frog got his mother all to himself, under the trees, near the waterfall, down by the river that drove the still unmended saw-mill, that they had real and satisfactory communion. It would have been interesting to have listened to these two—with memories and sympathies and feelings towards the Saviour of sinners so closely intertwined, yet with knowledge and intellectual powers in many respects so far apart. But we may not intrude too closely.
Towards the end of their walk, Bob touched on a subject which had been uppermost in the minds of both all the time, but from which they had shrunk equally, the one being afraid to ask, the other disinclined to tell.
“Mother,” said Bob, at last, “what about father?”
“Ah! Bobby,” replied Mrs Frog, beginning to weep, gently, “I know’d ye would come to that—you was always so fond of ’im, an’ he was so fond o’ you too, indeed—”
“I know it, mother,” interrupted Bob, “but have you never heard of him?”
“Never. I might ’ave, p’r’aps, if he’d bin took an’ tried under his own name, but you know he had so many aliases, an’ the old ’ouse we used to live in we was obliged to quit, so p’r’aps he tried to find us and couldn’t.”
“May God help him—dear father!” said the son in a low sad voice.
“I’d never ’ave left ’im, Bobby, if he ’adn’t left me. You know that. An’ if I thought he was alive and know’d w’ere he was, I’d go back to ’im yet, but—”
The subject was dropped here, for the new mill came suddenly into view, and Bob was glad to draw his mother’s attention to it.
“See, we were mending that just before we got the news you were so near us. Come, I’ll show it to you. Tim Lumpy and I made it all by ourselves, and I think you’ll call it a first-class article. By the way, how came you to travel first-class?”
“Oh! that’s all along of Sir Richard Brandon. He’s sitch a liberal gentleman, an’ said that as it was by his advice we were goin’ to Canada, he would pay our expenses; and he’s so grand that he never remembered there was any other class but first, when he took the tickets, an’ when he was show’d what he’d done he laughed an’ said he wouldn’t alter it, an’ we must go all the way first-class. He’s a strange man, but a good ’un!”
By this time they had reached the platform of the damaged saw-mill, and Bob pointed out, with elaborate care, the details of the mill in all its minute particulars, commenting specially on the fact that most of the telling improvements on it were due to the fertile brain and inventive genius of Tim Lumpy. He also explained the different kinds of saws—the ripping saw, and the cross-cut saw, and the circular saw, and the eccentric saw—just as if his mother were an embryo mill-wright, for he felt that she took a deep interest in it all, and Mrs Frog listened with the profound attention of a civil engineer, and remarked on everything with such comments as—oh! indeed! ah! well now! ain’t it wonderful? amazin’! an’ you made it all too! Oh! Bobby!—and other more or less appropriate phrases.
On quitting the mill to return to the house they saw a couple of figures walking down another avenue, so absorbed in conversation that they did not at first observe Bob and his mother, or take note of the fact that Matty, being a bouncing girl, had gone after butterflies or some such child-alluring insects.
It was Tim Lumpy and Hetty Frog.
And no wonder that they were absorbed, for was not their conversation on subjects of the profoundest interest to both?—George Yard, Whitechapel, Commercial Street, Spitalfields, and the Sailor’s Home, and the Rests, and all the other agencies for rescuing poor souls in monstrous London, and the teachers and school companions whom they had known there and never could forget! No wonder, we say, that these two were absorbed while comparing notes, and still less wonder that they were even more deeply absorbed when they got upon the theme of Bobby Frog—so much loved, nay, almost worshipped, by both.
