The arrival of Walter occasioned the most lively joy in Hyde Park Gardens. Hilda had written to his nurse, who had gone home to live with her mother when all hope of finding Walter had seemed to be at an end, to tell her that he would probably be at home on Wednesday evening, and that she was to be there to meet him. Her greeting of him was rapturous. It had been a source of bitter grief to her that he had been lost through a momentary act of carelessness on her part, and the relief that Hilda's letter had caused was great indeed. The child was scarcely less pleased to see her, for he retained a much more vivid recollection of her than he did of the others. He had already been told of his grandfather's death, but a year had so effaced his memory of him that he was not greatly affected at the news. In the course of a few hours he was almost as much at home in the house as if he had never left it.
CHAPTER XXIV.
A NEW BARGE.
The next morning Hilda went down to Rochester with Netta, Tom Roberts accompanying them. They had no difficulty in discovering the barge-builder's. It seemed to the girls a dirty-looking place, thickly littered as it was with shavings; men were at work on two or three barges which seemed, thus seen out of the water, an enormous size.
"Which is Mr. Gill?" Hilda asked a man passing.
"That is him, miss," and he pointed to a man who was in the act of giving directions to some workmen. They waited until he had finished, and then went up to him.
"I want to buy a barge, Mr. Gill," Hilda said.
"To buy a barge!" he repeated in surprise, for never before had he had a young lady as a customer.