h! 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
universa