Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - Robert Michael Ballantyne (best ebook reader txt) 📗

fate of his wife and family. Unfortunately the man who might have guided him to the right sources of information--the City missionary who had brought him to a knowledge of the truth--was seized with a severe illness, which not only confined him to a sick-bed for many weeks, but afterwards rendered it necessary that he should absent himself for a long time from the sphere of his labours. Thus, being left to himself, Ned's search was misdirected, and at last he came to the heart-breaking conclusion that they must have gone, as he expressed it, "to the bad;" that perhaps his wife had carried out her oft-repeated threat, and drowned herself, and that Bobby, having been only too successful a pupil in the ways of wickedness, had got himself transported.

To prosecute his inquiries among his old foes, the police, was so repugnant to Ned that he shrank from it, after the failure of one or two attempts, and the only other source which might have been successful he failed to appeal to through his own ignorance. He only knew of George Yard and the Home of Industry by name, as being places which he had hated, because his daughter Hetty was so taken up with them. Of course he was now aware that the people of George Yard did good work for his new Master, but he was so ignorant of the special phase of their work at the beginning of his Christian career that he never thought of applying to them for information. Afterwards he became so busy with his own special work, that he forgot all about these institutions.

When the missionary recovered and returned to his work, he at once--on hearing for the first time from Ned his family history--put him on the scent, and the discovery was then made that they had gone to Canada. He wrote immediately, and soon received a joyful reply from Hetty and a postscript from Bobby, which set his heart singing and his soul ablaze with gratitude to a sparing and preserving God.

About that time, however, the robust frame gave way under the amount of labour it was called on to perform. Ned was obliged to go into hospital. When there he received pressing invitations to go out to Canada, and offers of passage-money to any extent. Mrs Frog also offered to return home without delay and nurse him, and only waited to know whether he would allow her.

Ned declined, on the ground that he meant to accept their invitation and go to Canada as soon as he was able to undertake the voyage.

A relapse, however, interfered with his plans, and thus the visit, like many other desirable events in human affairs, was, for a time, delayed.


CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.


HOME AGAIN.

Time passed away, and Bobby Frog said to his mother one morning, "Mother, I'm going to England."

It was a fine summer morning when he said this. His mother was sitting in a bower which had been constructed specially for her use by her son and his friend Tim Lumpy. It stood at the foot of the garden, from which could be had a magnificent view of the neighbouring lake. Rich foliage permitted the slanting sunbeams to quiver through the bower, and little birds, of a pert conceited nature, twittered among the same. Martha Mild--the very embodiment of meek, earnest simplicity, and still a mere child in face though almost a woman in years--sat on a wooden stool at Mrs Frog's feet reading the Bible to her.

Martha loved the Bible and Mrs Frog; they were both fond of the bower; there was a spare half-hour before them;--hence the situation, as broken in upon by Bobby.

"To England, Bobby?"

"To England, mother."

Martha said nothing, but she gave a slight--an almost imperceptible-- start, and glanced at the sturdy youth with a mingled expression of anxiety and surprise.

The surprise Bob had expected; the anxiety he had hoped for; the start he had not foreseen, but now perceived and received as a glorious fact! Oh! Bobby Frog was a deep young rascal! His wild, hilarious, reckless spirit, which he found it so difficult to curb, even with all surroundings in his favour, experienced a great joy and sensation of restfulness in gazing at the pretty, soft, meek face of the little waif. He loved Martha, but, with all his recklessness, he had not the courage to tell her so, or to ask the condition of her feelings with regard to himself.

Being ingenious, however, and with much of the knowing nature of the "stray" still about him, he hit on this plan of killing two birds with one stone, as it were, by briefly announcing his intentions to his mother; and the result was more than he had hoped for.

"Yes, mother, to England--to London. You see, father's last letter was not at all satisfactory. Although he said he was convalescent and hoped to be able to travel soon, it seemed rather dull in tone, and now several posts have passed without bringing us a letter of any kind from him. I am beginning to feel anxious, and so as I have saved a good bit of money I mean to have a trip to old England and bring Daddy out with me."

"That will be grand indeed, my son. But will Mr Merryboy let ye go, Bobby?"

"Of course he will. He lets me do whatever I please, for he's as fond o' me as if he were my father."

"No; he ain't that," returned Mrs Frog, with a shake of the head; "your father was rough, Bobby, specially w'en in liquor, but he 'ad a kind 'art at bottom, and he was very fond o' you, Bobby--almost as fond as he once was o' me. Mr Merryboy could never come up to 'im in _that_."

"Did I say he came up to him, mother? I didn't say he was as fond o' me as my own father, but _as if he was_ my father. However, it's all arranged, and I go off at once."

"Not before breakfast, Bobby?"

"No, not quite. I never do anything important on an empty stomach, but by this time to-morrow I hope to be far on my way to the sea-coast, and I expect Martha to take good care of you till I come back."

"I'll be _sure_ to do that," said Martha, looking up in Mrs Frog's face affectionately.

Bob Frog noted the look, and was satisfied.

"But, my boy, I shan't be here when you come back. You know my visit is over in a week, and then we go to Sir Richard's estate."

"I know that, mother, but Martha goes with you there, to help you and Hetty and Matty to keep house while Tim Lumpy looks after the farm."

"Farm, my boy, what nonsense are you talking?"

"No nonsense, mother, it has all been arranged this morning, early though it is. Mr Merryboy has received a letter from Sir Richard, saying that he wants to gather as many people as possible round him, and offering him one of his farms on good terms, so Mr Merryboy is to sell this place as soon as he can, and Tim and I have been offered a smaller farm on still easier terms close to his, and not far from the big farm that Sir Richard has given to his son-in-law Mr Welland--"

"Son-in-law!" exclaimed Mrs Frog. "Do you mean to say that Mr Welland, who used to come down an' preach in the lodgin'-'ouses in Spitalfields 'as married that sweet hangel Miss Di?"

"I do mean that, mother. I could easily show him a superior angel, of course," said Bob with a steady look at Martha, "but he has done pretty well, on the whole."

"Pretty well!" echoed Mrs Frog indignantly; "he couldn't 'ave done better if 'e'd searched the wide world over."

"There I don't agree with you," returned her son; "however, it don't matter--Hallo! there goes granny down the wrong path!"

Bob dashed off at full speed after Mrs Merryboy, senior, who had an inveterate tendency, when attempting to reach Mrs Frog's bower, to take a wrong turn, and pursue a path which led from the garden to a pretty extensive piece of forest-land behind. The blithe old lady was posting along this track in a tremulo-tottering way when captured by Bob. At the same moment the breakfast-bell rang; Mr Merryboy's stentorian voice was immediately heard in concert; silvery shouts from the forest-land alluded to told where Hetty and Matty had been wandering, and a rush of pattering feet announced that the dogs of the farm were bent on being first to bid the old gentleman good-morning.

As Bob Frog had said, the following day found him far on his way to the sea-coast. A few days later found him on the sea,--wishing, earnestly, that he were on the land! Little more than a week after that found him in London walking down the old familiar Strand towards the city.

As he walked slowly along the crowded thoroughfare, where every brick seemed familiar and every human being strange, he could not help saying to himself mentally, "Can it be possible! was it here that I used to wander in rags? Thank God for the rescue and for the rescuers!"

"Shine yer boots, sir?" said a facsimile of his former self.

"Certainly, my boy," said Bob, at once submitting himself to the operator, although, his boots having already been well "shined," the operation was an obvious absurdity.

The boy must have felt something of this, for, when finished, he looked up at his employer with a comical expression. Bob looked at him sternly.

"They were about as bright before you began on 'em," he said.

"They was, sir," admitted the boy, candidly.

"How much?" demanded the old street boy. "On'y one ha'penny, sir," replied the young street boy, "but ven the day's fine, an' the boots don't want much shinin', we gin'rally expecs a penny. Gen'l'min _'ave_ bin known to go the length of tuppence."

Bob pulled out half-a-crown and offered it.

The boy grinned, but did not attempt to take it.

"Why don't you take it, my boy?"

"You _don't_ mean it, do you?" asked the boy, as the grin faded and the eyes opened.

"Yes, I do. Here, catch. I was once like you. Christ and Canada have made me what you see. Here is a little book that will tell you more about that."

He chanced to have one of Miss Macpherson's _Canadian Homes for London Wanderers_ in his pocket, and gave it to the little shoe-black,--who was one of the fluttering free-lances of the metropolis, not one of the "Brigade."

Bob could not have said another word to have saved his life. He turned quickly on his heel and walked away, followed by a fixed gaze and a prolonged whistle of astonishment.

"How hungry I used to be here," he muttered as he walked along, "so uncommon hungry! The smell of roasts and pies had something to do with it, I think. Why, there's the shop--yes, the very shop, where I stood once gazing at the victuals for a full hour before I could tear myself away. I do think that, for the sake of starving boys, to say nothing of men, women, and girls, these grub-shops