Mrs Merryboy, however, has improved in every way, and is more blooming than ever, as well as a trifle stouter, but Mrs Merryboy senior, although advanced spiritually, has degenerated a little physically. The few teeth that kept her nose and chin apart having disappeared, her mouth has also vanished, though there is a decided mark which tells where it was—especially when she speaks or smiles. The hair on her forehead has become as pure white as the winter snows of Canada. Wrinkles on her visage have become the rule, not the exception, but as they all run into comical twists, and play in the forms of humour, they may, perhaps, be regarded as a physical improvement. She is stone deaf now, but this also may be put to the credit side of her account, for it has rendered needless those awkward efforts to speak loud and painful attempts to hear which used to trouble the family in days gone by. It is quite clear, however, when you look into granny’s coal-black eyes, that if she were to live to the age of Methuselah she will never be blind, nor ill-natured, nor less pleased with herself, her surroundings, and the whole order of things created!
But who are these that sit so gravely and busily engaged with breakfast as though they had not the prospect of another meal that year? Two young men and a young girl. One young man is broad and powerful though short, with an incipient moustache and a fluff of whisker. The other is rather tall, slim, and gentlemanly, and still beardless. The girl is little, neat, well-made, at the budding period of life, brown-haired, brown-eyed, round, soft—just such a creature as one feels disposed to pat on the head and say, “My little pet!”
Why, these are two “waifs” and a “stray!” Don’t you know them? Look again. Is not the stout fellow our friend Bobby Frog, the slim one Tim Lumpy, and the girl Martha Mild? But who, in all London, would believe that these were children who had bean picked out of the gutter? Nobody—except those good Samaritans who had helped to pick them up, and who could show you the photographs of what they once were and what they now are.
Mr Merryboy, although changed a little as regards legs, was not in the least deteriorated as to lungs. As Granny, Mrs Merryboy, and the young people sat at breakfast he was heard at an immense distance off, gradually making his way towards the house.
“Something seems to be wrong with father this morning, I think,” said Mrs Merryboy, junior, listening.
Granny, observing the action, pretended to listen, and smiled.
“He’s either unusually jolly or unusually savage—a little more tea, mother,” said Tim Lumpy, pushing in his cup.
Tim, being father-and-motherless, called Mr Merryboy father and the wife mother. So did Martha, but Bobby Frog, remembering those whom he had left at home, loyally declined, though he did not object to call the elder Mrs Merryboy granny.
“Something for good or evil must have happened,” said Bobby, laying down his knife and fork as the growling sound drew nearer.
At last the door flew open and the storm burst in. And we may remark that Mr Merryboy’s stormy nature was, if possible, a little more obtrusive than it used to be, for whereas in former days his toes and heels did most of the rattling-thunder business, the stick now came into play as a prominent creator of din—not only when flourished by hand, but often on its own account and unexpectedly, when propped clumsily in awkward places.