Then there was Tom, the eldest boy, who gripped hold of Sarah's hand and wrung it until she could have shrieked with the pain, but, taking it as an expression of kindness and welcome, she bore it bravely and looked at him with a smiling face; she knew better afterwards.
After Tom came the twins, Minnie and the Johnnie who had been slapped the day before; and last of all, Janey, the prettiest, and Sarah fancied the sweetest, of them all. Janey was seven, or, as she said herself, nearly eight.
"I suppose," said Mrs. Stubbs, addressing herself to Flossie, "that your pa 'asn't got 'ome yet?"
"No, Ma, not yet," returned Flossie.
But, presently, when Mrs. Stubbs had changed her dress for a garment such as Sarah had never beheld before, and which May told her was a tea-gown, and was enjoying a cup of sweet-smelling tea in the large and shady drawing-room--to Sarah a perfect dream of beauty--he came! Came with a bustle and noise like a tempest, and caught his stout wife round the waist, with a "Hulloa, old woman, it's a sight for sore eyes to see you 'ome again!"
Sarah had determined to be surprised at nothing, but her Uncle Stubbs was altogether too much for her resolution. In apologising to herself afterwards, she said she was obliged to stare.
"And where's the little lass?" Mr. Stubbs asked when he had kissed his wife. "Oh, there! Well, aren't you going to speak to your uncle, eh?"
"Yes, Uncle," said Sarah shyly.
He drew her nearer to him, and turned her face to the light.
"Like her dear ma," put in Mrs. Stubbs.