Here Ned got upon the door-step of his adversary, and finished off by what is sometimes styled “improving the occasion.”
Of course, one of the first things that Ned Frog did, on coming to his “right mind,” was to make earnest and frequent inquiries as to the fate of his wife and family. Unfortunately the man who might have guided him to the right sources of information—the City missionary who had brought him to a knowledge of the truth—was seized with a severe illness, which not only confined him to a sick-bed for many weeks, but afterwards rendered it necessary that he should absent himself for a long time from the sphere of his labours. Thus, being left to himself, Ned’s search was misdirected, and at last he came to the heart-breaking conclusion that they must have gone, as he expressed it, “to the bad;” that perhaps his wife had carried out her oft-repeated threat, and drowned herself, and that Bobby, having been only too successful a pupil in the ways of wickedness, had got himself transported.
To prosecute his inquiries among his old foes, the police, was so repugnant to Ned that he shrank from it, after the failure of one or two attempts, and the only other source which might have been successful he failed to appeal to through his own ignorance. He only knew of George Yard and the Home of Industry by name, as being places which he had hated, because his daughter Hetty was so taken up with them. Of course he was now aware that the people of George Yard did good work for his new Master, but he was so ignorant of the special phase of their work at the beginning of his Christian career that he never thought of applying to them for information. Afterwards he became so busy with his own special work, that he forgot all about these institutions.
When the missionary recovered and returned to his work, he at once—on hearing for the first time from Ned his family history—put him on the scent, and the discovery was then made that they had gone to Canada. He wrote immediately, and soon received a joyful reply from Hetty and a postscript from Bobby, which set his heart singing and his soul ablaze with gratitude to a sparing and preserving God.
About that time, however, the robust frame gave way under the amount of labour it was called on to perform. Ned was obliged to go into hospital. When there he received pressing invitations to go out to Canada, and offers of passage-money to any extent. Mrs Frog also offered to return home without delay and nurse him, and only waited to know whether he would allow her.
Ned declined, on the ground that he meant to accept their invitation and go to Canada as soon as he was able to undertake the voyage.
A relapse, however, interfered with his plans, and thus the visit, like many other desirable events in human affairs, was, for a time, delayed.