“It’s of no use to make a fuss, though,” said Jack, who insisted on looking on the bright side of it all. “We all knew the house would come down some day, and if it hadn’t fallen now it would have been much too wet to live in. And I don’t believe it was healthy before. As for Jem, though he nearly got buried in the ruins, he didn’t quite, and he’s all right now, and thinks Bob a hero, which he never did before. Then, if father had been here, he couldn’t have prevented the flood, or the house falling, and there’d have been another to find room for somewhere, to-night. Things might have been ever so much worse.”
Madge entered into this cheerful view of the matter, and went with Mrs. Coleson to find lodgings where they could all be taken in at once. For though the neighbours were kind enough, and one would have taken two of the children, another two more, for the night, they wanted to keep all together if it could possibly be managed.
And so, before nightfall they were installed in three empty rooms in a house in the next street, and some people lent them one thing, and some another—old boxes for table and chairs, and the landlady of the lodging spared what she could for them in the way of furniture, until the boys and girls all declared it was the best fun in the world, and that they liked it better than being at home.
It was not till the next morning that the water was sufficiently drained away for anything to be done in the way of recovering their property from the fallen building. All hands went to work, though, as soon as it was light, and the boys, instead of being cast down at the sight of so many things broken, bent, soaked or spoiled, shouted with laughter as they recognized in a battered, shapeless, flat object the metal tea-pot out of which they had had tea ever since they could remember, or found an extraordinary black pulpy mass to be their mother’s old feather-bed.
Every bit of crockery was broken. The clock would never go again. In fact, very little that could be of any use except for firewood was recovered. A blanket or two, so transformed that at first nobody knew what they were, later on a few bent and rusty knives and forks, and a coal-scuttle, almost made up the sum of available property when all was done.
Mrs. Kayll had really to start house-keeping again from the very beginning, poorer than when she and her husband began life together seventeen years ago, with only two people to support instead of nine.
This morning Mrs. Coleson came back laden with several little additions to their comfort, insisting on staying there and helping to the best of her power. For this day or two her aid was very welcome, for Mrs. Kayll and the elder children all felt that it was impossible to decide upon anything, or form any plan, until next Tuesday should be over.
CHAPTER XIV.
REUNION.
THE day had come: the eventful day when Mr. Kayll’s case was to be heard again. The children knew nothing whatever about the law, but they had gathered from their mother that Tuesday would decide their father’s fate, and either set him free to come back to them, or—or something too dreadful even to be imagined would happen. But no one would allow this last thought a moment’s entrance. He would come back, though there was no home to come to, except in the sense that any place is home where all those we love are assembled.