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.
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