"I don't know," said Pamela in her turn.
Suddenly Duke raised himself a little, and Pamela, feeling him move, sat up and opened her eyes.
"What is it?" she asked, but he did not need to answer, for just then she too heard the sound that had caught Duke's ears. It was the barking of a dog—not a deep baying sound, but a short, eager, energetic bark, and seemingly very near them. The children looked at each other and then rose to their feet.
"Couldn't you fink it was Toby?" said Pamela in a low voice, though why she spoke so low she could not have said.
Duke nodded, and then, moved by the same impulse, they went forward to the middle of the road and looked about them, hand in hand. Again came the sharp eager bark, and this time a voice was heard as if soothing the dog, though they could not quite catch the words. But some one was near them—thus much seemed certain, and the very idea had comfort in it. Still, for a minute or two they could not make out where were the dog and its owner; for they did not know that a short way down the road a path ending in a stile crossed the fields from the village of Nooks to the high-road. And when, therefore, at but a few paces distant, there suddenly appeared a small figure, looking dark against the white dust of the road, frisking and frolicking about in evident excitement, it really seemed to the little brother and sister as if it had sprung out of the earth by magic. They had not time, however, to speak—hardly to wonder—to themselves before, all frisking and frolicking at an end, the shaggy ball was upon them, and, with a rush that for half a second made Pamela inclined to scream, the little dog flew at them, barking, yelping, almost choking with delight, flinging himself first on one then on the other, darting back a step or two as if to see them more distinctly and make sure he was not mistaken, then rolling himself upon them again all quivering and shaking with rapture. And the cry of ecstasy that broke from the twins would have gone to the heart of any one that loved them.
"Oh Toby, Toby!—bruvver—sister—it is, it is our own Toby. He has come to take us home. Oh dear, dear Toby!"
"OH TOBY, TOBY!—BRUVVER—SISTER—IT IS, IT IS OUR OWN TOBY, HE HAS
COME TO TAKE US HOME. OH DEAR, DEAR TOBY!"—p. [220].
It did go to the heart of some one not far off. A quaintly-clad, somewhat aged, woman was slowly climbing the stile at the moment that the words rang clearly out into the summer air. "Oh Toby, our Toby!" and no one who had not seen it could have believed how nimbly old Barbara skipped or slid or tumbled down the steps on the road-side of the stile, and how, in far less time than it takes to tell it, she was down on her knees in the dust with a child in each arm, and Toby flashing about the trio, so that he seemed to be everywhere at once.