o 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--O