They went back, looking eagerly into carriage after carriage—Bob even glancing under the seats in a sort of wild hope that his mother might be hiding there, but no one resembling Mrs Frog was to be seen.
A commotion at the front part of the train, more pronounced than the general hubbub, attracted their attention.
“Oh! where is he—where is he?” cried a female voice, which was followed up by the female herself, a respectable elderly woman, who went about the platform scattering people right and left in a fit of temporary insanity, “where is my Bobby, where is he, I say? Oh! why won’t people git out o’ my way? Git out o’ the way,” (shoving a sluggish man forcibly), “where are you, Bobby? Bo–o–o–o–o–by!”
It was Mrs Frog! Bob saw her, but did not move. His heart was in his throat! He could not move. As he afterwards said, he was struck all of a heap, and could only stand and gaze with his hands clasped.
“Out o’ the way, young man!” cried Mrs Frog, brushing indignantly past him, in one of her erratic bursts. “Oh! Bobby—where has that boy gone to?”
“Mother!” gasped Bob.
“Who said that?” cried Mrs Frog, turning round with a sharp look, as if prepared to retort “you’re another” on the shortest notice.
“Mother!” again said Bob, unclasping his hands and holding them out.
Mrs Frog had hitherto, regardless of the well-known effect of time, kept staring at heads on the level which Bobby’s had reached when he left home. She now looked up with a startled expression.
“Can it—is it—oh! Bo—” she got no further, but sprang forward and was caught and fervently clasped in the arms of her son.