The ladies looked from Darby to the dwarf in a bewildered way. Again he attempted to explain his presence there, and again he failed. He was about to steal quietly away—for was not his work done, his mission accomplished?—when all at once the ground seemed to slip from beneath his feet; he swayed, reeled, and with a low moan, as of a hurt animal, fell on the grass border within the gate, at the very feet of the children whose safety he had counted of so much more consequence than his own life.
Darby flung himself on the ground beside the still, pathetic little figure, and Joan, with sobs and cries, implored her dear dwarf to open his eyes, to waken up and speak to his own little missy once more. But the dwarf did not move or speak. His ears were deaf to Darby's tender tones and Joan's insistent pleading.
At this moment Nurse Perry, with Eric in her arms, popped her head out at the front door—just to get a breath of fresh air, as she would have said. For a long minute she gazed at the group by the gate; then with a loud cry, and dumping baby down upon the door mat, she flew along the gravel path, and flinging her arms around the children, she laughed and cried over them by turns.
"My precious pets!" she sobbed. "And have they come back to their poor old Perry? And us thinkin' you was both dead and drownded in the canal. Oh, did I ever!"
"There, nurse, that will do. You'd choke a fellow," declared Darby, wriggling himself out of her clinging embrace. "Of course we're not either dead or drowned. How can you be so silly?"
"Eh! and is it silly you call me for near frettin' myself into the grave about you?" cried nurse, stung by Master Darby's want of feeling.—"Miss Joan won't call nursie silly; sure you won't, lovey? And aren't you glad to get back to your own Perry, and baby, and everything?"
"Yes, werry glad," agreed Joan readily; "and I hope you've got lots and lots of jam and goodies for tea. Has you, nurse? 'cause I's as hung'y as hung'y as anythin'!" she whimpered.
"Yes, darlin', there's a seed-cake and toast, and a whole pot of beautiful strawberry jam that has never been touched. I couldn't eat hardly a mouthful these days for picterin' my pretty lyin' in the mud at the bottom of that slimy, smellin' canal," whined Perry, wiping her eyes on the corner of a much-betrimmed white apron.
"That'll do, Perry," called out Miss Turner, in her usual brisk tones. "Come here; I want you."
"Yes, ma'am," answered Perry meekly. "But oh, ma'am, what's that?" she screamed, noticing for the first time the odd little object on the grass over which the ladies were so anxiously bending. "What ever is it, Miss Alice? Is it a man—that? and is he living?" the woman inquired in a shocked whisper, drawing back her skirts, and gaping with eyes and mouth at the quiet figure huddled in a little heap at Miss Turner's feet. Yet when Perry had been made to understand that it was even to this small creature they owed the safety and return of their darlings, she was as warm in her expressions of gratitude and as eager to be kind to him as her mistresses themselves.