"He is very pleased, ma'am—he's a very wise and a very good feeling dog is Toby, there's no doubt. And one that knows when to be sad and—and when to be rejoiced, as I might say," said Barbara, though her voice trembled with the effort to speak calmly.
Something seemed to flash across the room to Grandmamma as Mrs. Twiss spoke—down fell the knitting, the needles, and the wool, all in a tangle, as the old lady started to her feet.
"Barbara—Barbara Twiss!" she cried. "What do you mean? Oh Barbara, you have news of our darlings? Marmaduke, my dear husband, do you hear?" and she raised her voice, "she has brought us news at last," and Grandmamma tottered forward a few steps and then, growing suddenly dazed and giddy, would have fallen had not Grandpapa and Barbara started towards her from different sides and caught her. But she soon recovered herself, and eagerly signed to Barbara to "tell." How Barbara told she never knew. It seemed to her that Grandmamma guessed the words before she spoke them, and looking back on it all afterwards she could recollect nothing but a sort of joyous confusion—Grandpapa rushing out without his hat, but stopping to take his stick all the same—Grandmamma holding by the table to steady herself when, in another moment, they were all back again—then a cluster all together—of Grandpapa, Grandmamma, Duke, Pamela and Barbara, with Nurse and Biddy, and Dymock and Cook, and stable-boys and gardeners, and everybody, and Toby everywhere at once. Broken words and sobs and kisses and tears and blessings all together, and Pamela's little soft high voice sounding above all as she cried—
"Oh, dear Grandmamma, us is so glad you are not dead. Duke was so afraid you might be."
And Tim—where was he?—standing outside in the porch, but smiling to himself—not afraid of being forgotten, for he had a trustful nature.
"It's easy to see as the old gentleman and lady is terrible fond of master and missy," he thought. "But they must be terrible clever folk in these parts to have writing outside of the house even," for his glance had fallen on the quaintly-carved letters on the lintel, "Niks sonder Arbitt." "I wonder now what that there writing says," he reflected.
But he was not allowed to wonder long. A few moments more and there came the summons his faithful little heart had been sure would come.
"Tim, Tim—where is Tim? Come and see our Grandpapa and our Grandmamma, Tim," and two pairs of little hot hands dragged him into the parlour.
It was not at all like his dream, but it was far grander than any room he had ever been in before, and never afterwards did the boy forget the strange sweet perfume which seemed a part of it all—the scent of the dried rose-leaves in the jars, though he did not then know what it was. But it always came back to him when he thought of that first evening—the beginning to him of a good and honest and useful life—when the tall old gentleman and the sweet little old lady laid their hands on his curly head and blessed him for what he had done and promised to be his friends.
They kept their promise well and wisely. Grandpapa took real trouble to find out what the boy was best fitted for, and when he found it was for gardening, Tim was thoroughly trained by old Noble till he was able to get a good place of his own. He lived with Barbara in her neat little cottage, and in the evenings learned to read and write and cipher, so that before very long he could make out the letters in the porch, though Grandpapa had to be asked to tell their meaning.