CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.
HAPPY MEETINGS.
It was to the same railway station as that at which they had parted fromtheir guardian and been handed over to Mr Merryboy years before thatBobby 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 aboutfive 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 thingit 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 twoor three dozen people on this platform are all as uncomfortablyimpatient as I am."
"Perhaps they are," said Tim, "but certainly possessed of more power torestrain themselves."
"Tim," said Bob, after the lapse of five-and-twenty minutes, "did youever hear of such a long half-hour since you were born?"
"Never," replied the sympathetic Tim, "except once long ago when I wasstarving, and stood for about that length of time in front of aconfectioner's window till I nearly collapsed and had to run away atlast 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 oddnumbers."
There was a sharpish curve on the line close to the station. While BobFrog was away the train, being five minutes before its time, camethundering round the curve and rushed alongside the platform.
Bob ran back of course and stood vainly trying to see the people in eachcarriage as it went past.
"Oh! _what_ a sweet eager face!" exclaimed Tim, gazing after a younggirl who had thrust her head out of a first-class carriage.
"Let alone sweet faces, Tim--this way. The third classes are allbehind."
By this time the train had stopped, and great was the commotion asfriends and relatives met or said good-bye hurriedly, and bustled intoand out of the carriages--commotion which was increased by the cheeringof a fresh band of rescued waifs going to new homes in the west, and thehissing of the safety valve which took it into its head at thatinconvenient moment to let off superfluous steam. Some of the peoplerushing about on that platform and jostling each other would have beenthe better for safety valves! poor Bobby Frog was one of these.
"Not there!" he exclaimed despairingly, as he looked into the lastcarriage of the train.
"Impossible," said Tim, "we've only missed them; walk back."
They went back, looking eagerly into carriage after carriage--Bob evenglancing under the seats in a sort of wild hope that his mother might behiding there, but no one resembling Mrs Frog was to be seen.
A commotion at the front part of the train, more pronounced than thegeneral hubbub, attracted their attention.
"Oh! where is he--where is he?" cried a female voice, which was followedup by the female herself, a respectable elderly woman, who went aboutthe platform scattering people right and left in a fit of temporaryinsanity, "where is my Bobby, where _is_ he, I say? Oh! _why_ won'tpeople git out o' my way? _Git_ out o' the way," (shoving a sluggishman 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 histhroat! He _could_ not move. As he afterwards said, he was struck allof a heap, and could only stand and gaze with his hands clasped.
"Out o' the _way_, young man!" cried Mrs Frog, brushing indignantlypast him, in one of her erratic bursts. "Oh! Bobby--where _has_ thatboy gone to?"
"Mother!" gasped Bob.
"Who said that?" cried Mrs Frog, turning round with a sharp look, as ifprepared 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 heleft home. She now looked up with a startled expression.
"Can it--is it--oh! Bo--" she got no further, but sprang forward andwas caught and fervently clasped in the arms of her son.
Tim fluttered round them, blowing his nose violently though quite freefrom cold in the head--which complaint, indeed, is not common in thoseregions.
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 madesure of her by holding out a hand which the good woman grasped, and laidher head on his breast, quite willing to make use of him as a convenientpost to lean against, while she observed the meeting of the young peoplewith 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 belongedto Hetty! Long-continued love to human souls had given to her face asweetness--and sympathy with human spirits and bodies in the depths ofpoverty, sorrow, and deep despair had invested it with a pitifultenderness and refinement--which one looks for more naturally among theinnocent in the higher ranks of life.
Poor Tim gazed unutterably, and his heart went on in such a way thateven Mrs Frog's attention was arrested. Looking up, she asked if hewas took bad.
"Oh! dear no. By no means," said Tim, quickly.
"You're tremblin' so," she returned, "an' it ain't cold--but yourcolour's all right. I suppose it's the natur' o' you Canadians. Butonly to think that my Bobby," she added, quitting her leaning-post, andagain seizing her son, "that my Bobby should 'ave grow'd up, an' hispoor mother knowed nothink about it! I can't believe my eyes--it ain'tlike Bobby a bit, yet some'ow I _know_ it's 'im! Why, you've grow'dinto a gentleman, you 'ave."
"And you have grown into a flatterer," said Bob, with a laugh. "Butcome, mother, this way; I've brought the wagon for you. Look after theluggage, Tim--Oh! I forgot. This is Tim, Hetty--Tim Lumpy. Youremember, 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 tallgood-looking youth, who seemed unaccountably shy and confused as he wentoff to look after the luggage.
"Here is the wagon; come along," said Bob, leading his mother out of thestation.
"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 meansthe same thing here. You've got strange ways in Canada."
"Yes, mother, and pleasant ways too, as I hope you shall find out erelong. Get in, now. Take care! Now then, Hetty--come, Matty. Howdifficult to believe that such a strapping young thing can be thesqualling Matty I left in London!"
Matty laughed as she got in, by way of reply, for she did not yet quitebelieve 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 theroad 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 onthat occasion? That Hetty and Matty took violently to brown-eyed Marthaat first sight, having heard all about her from Bob long ago--as she ofthem; that Mrs Merryboy was, we may say, one glowing beam ofhospitality; that Mrs Frog was, so to speak, one blazingpersonification of amazement, which threatened to become chronic--therewas so much that was contrary to previous experience and she was so slowto take it in; that Mr Merryboy became noisier than ever, and that,what between his stick and his le
gs, to say nothing of his voice, hemanaged to create in one day hubbub enough to last ten families for afortnight; 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 inthe matter of nodding and gazing and smirking and wrinkling, so thatthere seemed some danger of her terminating her career in a gush ofuniversal 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 thetrees, near the waterfall, down by the river that drove the stillunmended saw-mill, that they had real and satisfactory communion. Itwould have been interesting to have listened to these two--with memoriesand sympathies and feelings towards the Saviour of sinners so closelyintertwined, yet with knowledge and intellectual powers in many respectsso far apart. But we may not intrude too closely.
Towards the end of their walk, Bob touched on a subject which had beenuppermost in the minds of both all the time, but from which they hadshrunk equally, the one being afraid to ask, the other disinclined totell.
"Mother," said Bob, at last, "what about father?"
"Ah! Bobby," replied Mrs Frog, beginning to weep, gently, "I know'd yewould 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 ownname, but you know he had so many aliases, an' the old 'ouse we used tolive in we was obliged to quit, so p'r'aps he tried to find us andcouldn'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 nearus. Come, I'll show it to you. Tim Lumpy and I made it all byourselves, and I think you'll call it a first-class article. By theway, how came you to travel first-class?"
"Oh! that's all along of Sir Richard Brandon. He's sitch a liberalgentleman, an' said that as it was by his advice we were goin' toCanada, he would pay our expenses; and he's so grand that he neverremembered there was any other class but first, when he took thetickets, an' when he was show'd what he'd done he laughed an' said hewouldn't alter it, an' we must go all the way first-class. He's astrange man, but a good 'un!"
By this time they had reached the platform of the damaged saw-mill, andBob pointed out, with elaborate care, the details of the mill in all itsminute particulars, commenting specially on the fact that most of thetelling improvements on it were due to the fertile brain and inventivegenius of Tim Lumpy. He also explained the different kinds of saws--theripping saw, and the cross-cut saw, and the circular saw, and theeccentric 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 listenedwith the profound attention of a civil engineer, and remarked oneverything with such comments as--oh! indeed! ah! well now! ain't itwonderful? amazin'! an' you made it all too! Oh! Bobby!--and othermore or less appropriate phrases.
On quitting the mill to return to the house they saw a couple of figureswalking down another avenue, so absorbed in conversation that they didnot at first observe Bob and his mother, or take note of the fact thatMatty, being a bouncing girl, had gone after butterflies or some suchchild-alluring insects.
It was Tim Lumpy and Hetty Frog.
And no wonder that they were absorbed, for was not their conversation onsubjects 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 andnever could forget! No wonder, we say, that these two were absorbedwhile comparing notes, and still less wonder that they were even moredeeply absorbed when they got upon the theme of Bobby Frog--so muchloved, nay, almost worshipped, by both.
At last they observed Mrs Frog's scarlet shawl--which was veryconspicuous--and her son, and tried to look unconscious, and wonderedwith quite needless surprise where Matty could have gone to.
Bobby Frog, being a sharp youth, noted these things, but made no commentto any one, for the air of Canada had, somehow, invested this waif withwonderful delicacy of feeling.
Although Bob and his mother left off talking of Ned Frog somewhatabruptly, as well as sorrowfully, it does not follow that we are boundto do the same. On the contrary, we now ask the reader to leave BranklyFarm rather abruptly, and return to London for the purpose of paying Neda visit.