Robert Michael Ballantyne - Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure

As the missionary spoke little Lilly threw up her arms and uttered a cry of alarm. Robin, although obedient, was short of memory, and his energetic spirit being too strong for his excitable little frame he had recommenced his wriggling, with the effect of bursting the last button off his waistcoat and thrusting Lilly off the plank. She was received, however, on Hetty’s breast, who fell with her to the ground.

“Not hurt, Hetty!” exclaimed the missionary, running forward to help the girl up.

“Oh! no, sir,” replied Hetty with a short laugh, as she rose and placed Lilly on a safer part of the see-saw.

“Come here, Hetty,” said John Seaward, “and rest a while. You have done enough just now; let some one else take your place.”

After repairing the buttonless waistcoat with a pin and giving its owner a caution, Hetty went and sat down on the grass beside the missionary.

“How is Bobby?” asked the latter, “I have not found a moment to speak to you till now.”

“Thank you, sir, he’s better; much better. I fear he will be well too soon.”

“How so? That’s a strange remark, my girl.”

“It may seem strange, sir, but—you know—father’s very fond of Bobby.”

“Well, Hetty, that’s not a bad sign of your father.”

“Oh but, sir, father sits at his bedside when he’s sober, an’ has such long talks with him about robberies and burglaries, and presses him very hard to agree to go out with him when he’s well. I can’t bear to hear it, for dear Bobby seems to listen to what he says, though sometimes he refuses, and defies him to do his worst, especially when he—”

“Stay, dear girl. It is very very sad, but don’t tell me anything more about your father. Tell it all to Jesus, Hetty. He not only sympathises with, but is able to save—even to the uttermost.”

“Yes, thank God for that ‘uttermost,’” said the poor girl, clasping her hands quickly together. “Oh, I understood that when He saved me , and I will trust to it now.”

“And the gentleman who called on you,—has he been again?” asked the missionary.

“No, sir, he has only come once, but he has sent his butler three or four times with some money for us, and always with the message that it is from Miss Diana, to be divided between Bobby and me. Unfortunately father chanced to be at home the first time he came and got it all, so we got none of it. But he was out the other times. The butler is an oldish man, and a very strange one. He went about our court crying.”

“Crying! Hetty, that’s a curious condition for an oldish butler to be in.”

“Oh, of course I don’t mean cryin’ out like a baby,” said Hetty, looking down with a modest smile, “but I saw tears in his eyes, and sometimes they got on his cheeks. I can’t think what’s the matter with him.”

Whatever Mr Seaward thought on this point he said nothing, but asked if Bobby was able to go out.

Oh yes, he was quite able to walk about now with a little help, Hetty said, and she had taken several walks with him and tried to get him to speak about his soul, but he only laughed at that, and said he had too much trouble with his body to think about his soul—there was time enough for that!

They were interrupted at this point by a merry shout of glee, and, looking up, found that young Welland had mounted the see-saw, taken Lilly Snow in front of him, had Dick Swiller reinstated to counterbalance his extra weight, and was enjoying himself in a most hilarious manner among the fluttering rags. Assuredly, the fluttering rags did not enjoy themselves a whit less hilariously than he.

In this condition he was found by the owner of the grounds, George Brisbane, Esquire, of Lively Hall, who, accompanied by his wife, and a tall, dignified friend with a little girl, approached the see-saw.

“I am glad you enjoy yourself so much, my young friend,” he said to Welland; “to which of the ragged schools may you belong?”

In much confusion—for he was rather shy—Welland made several abortive efforts to check the see-saw, which efforts Dick Swiller resisted to the uttermost, to the intense amusement of a little girl who held Mrs Brisbane’s hand. At last he succeeded in arresting it and leaped off.

“I beg pardon,” he said, taking off his cap to the lady as he advanced, “for intruding uninvited on—”

“Pray don’t speak of intrusion,” interrupted Mr Brisbane, extending his hand; “if you are here as Mr Seaward’s friend you are a welcome guest. Your only intrusion was among the little ones, but as they seem not to resent it neither do I.”

Welland grasped the proffered hand. “Thank you very much,” he returned, “but I can scarcely lay claim to Mr Seaward’s friendship. The fact is, I am here in consequence of an accident to my bicycle.”

“Oh! then you are one of the poor unfortunates after all,” said the host. “Come, you are doubly welcome. Not hurt much, I hope. No? That’s all right. But don’t let me keep you from your amusements. Remember, we shall expect you at the feast on the lawn. You see, Sir Richard,” he added, turning to his dignified friend, “when we go in for this sort of thing we don’t do it by halves. To have any lasting effect, it must make a deep impression. So we have got up all sorts of amusements, as you observe, and shall have no fewer than two good feeds. Come, let us visit some other—Why, what are you gazing at so intently?”

He might well ask the question, for Sir Richard Brandon had just observed Hetty Frog, and she, unaccustomed to such marked attention, was gazing in perplexed confusion on the ground. At the same time little Di, having caught sight of her, quitted Mrs Brisbane, ran towards her with a delighted scream, and clasping her hand in both of hers, proclaimed her the sister of “my boy!”

Hetty’s was not the nature to refuse such affection. Though among the poorest of the poor, and clothed in the shabbiest and most patchy of garments, (which in her case, however, were neat, clean and well mended), she was rich in a loving disposition; so that, forgetting herself and the presence of others, she stooped and folded the little girl in her arms. And, when the soft brown hair and pale pretty face of Poverty were thus seen as it were co-mingling with the golden locks and rosy cheeks of Wealth, even Sir Richard was forced to admit to himself that it was not after all a very outrageous piece of impropriety!

“Oh! I’m so glad to hear that he’s much better, and been out too! I would have come to see him again long long ago, but p—”

She checked herself, for Mrs Screwbury had carefully explained to her that no good girl ever said anything against her parents; and little Di had swallowed the lesson, for, when not led by passion, she was extremely teachable.

“And oh!” she continued, opening her great blue lakelets to their widest state of solemnity, “you haven’t the smallest bit of notion how I have dreamt about my boy—and my policeman too! I never can get over the feeling that they might both have been killed, and if they had, you know, it would have been me that did it; only think! I would have—been—a murderer! P’raps they’d have hanged me!”

“But they weren’t killed, dear,” said Hetty, unable to restrain a smile at the awful solemnity of the child, and the terrible fate referred to.

“No—I’m so glad, but I can’t get over it,” continued Di, while those near to her stood quietly by unable to avoid overhearing, even if they had wished to do so. “And they do such strange things in my dreams,” continued Di, “you can’t think. Only last night I was in our basket-cart—the dream-one, you know, not the real one—and the dream-pony ran away again, and gave my boy such a dreadful knock that he fell flat down on his back, tumbled over two or three times, and rose up—a policeman! Not my policeman, you know, but quite another one that I had never seen before! But the very oddest thing of all was that it made me so angry that I jumped with all my might on to his breast, and when I got there it wasn’t the policeman but the pony! and it was dead—quite dead, for I had killed it, and I wasn’t sorry at all—not a bit!”