Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished: A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure

And now the remnant of the band—still a goodly number—proceeded in the direction of the far west. All night they travelled, and reached Belleville, where they were received joyfully in the large house presented as a free gift to Miss Macpherson by the Council of the County of Hastings. It served as a “Distributing Home” and centre in Canada for the little ones till they could be placed in suitable situations, and to it they might be returned if necessary, or a change of employer required it. This Belleville Home was afterwards burned to the ground, and rebuilt by sympathising Canadian friends.

But we may not pause long here. The far west still lies before us. Our gradually diminishing band must push on.

“It’s the sea!” exclaimed the boy who had been named little Mouse, alias Robbie Dell.

“No, it ain’t,” said Konky, who was a good deal older; “it’s a lake.”

“Ontario,” said the Guardian, “one of the noble fresh-water seas of Canada.”

Onward, ever onward, is the watchword just now—dropping boys like seed-corn as they go! Woods and fields, and villas, and farms, and waste-lands, and forests, and water, fly past in endless variety and loveliness.

“A panoramy without no end!” exclaimed Tim Lumpy after one of his long gazes of silent admiration.

“Wot a diff’rence!” murmured Bobby Frog. “Wouldn’t mother an’ daddy an’ Hetty like it, just!”

The city of Toronto came in sight. The wise arrangements for washing in Canadian railway-cars had been well used by the boys, and pocket-combs also. They looked clean and neat and wonderfully solemn as they landed at the station.

But their fame had preceded them. An earnest crowd came to see the boys, among whom were some eager to appropriate.

“I’ll take that lad,” said one bluff farmer, stepping forward, and pointing to a boy whose face had taken his fancy.

“And I want six boys for our village,” said another.

“I want one to learn my business,” said a third, “and I’ll learn him as my own son. Here are my certificates of character from my clergyman and the mayor of the place I belong to.”

“I like the looks of that little fellow,” said another, pointing to Bob Frog, “and should like to have him.”

“Does you, my tulip?” said Bobby, whose natural tendency to insolence had not yet been subdued; “an’ don’t you vish you may get ’im!”

It is but justice to Bobby, however, to add, that this remark was made entirely to himself.

To all these flattering offers the Guardian turned a deaf ear, until he had passed through the crowd and marshalled his boys in an empty room of the depôt. Then inquiries were made; the boys’ characters and capacities explained; suitability on both sides considered; the needs of the soul as well as the body referred to and pressed; and, finally, the party went on its way greatly reduced in numbers.

Thus they dwindled and travelled westward until only our friend Bobby, Tim, Konky, and little Mouse remained with the Guardian, whose affections seemed to intensify as fewer numbers were left on which they might concentrate.

Soon the little Mouse was caught. A huge backwoods farmer, who could have almost put him in his coat-pocket, took a fancy to him. The fancy seemed to be mutual, for, after a tearful farewell to the Guardian, the Mouse went off with the backwoodsman quite contentedly.

Then Konky was disposed of. A hearty old lady with a pretty daughter and a slim son went away with him in triumph, and the band was reduced to two.

“I do believe,” whispered Bob to Tim, “that he’s goin’ to let us stick together after all.”

“You are right, my dear boy,” said the Guardian, who overheard the remark. “A family living a considerable distance off wishes to have two boys. I have reason to believe that they love the Lord Jesus, and will treat you well. So, as I knew you wished to be together, I have arranged for your going to live with them.”

As the journey drew to a close, the Guardian seemed to concentrate his whole heart on the little waifs whom he had conducted so far, and he gave them many words of counsel, besides praying with and for them.

At last, towards evening, the train rushed into a grand pine-wood. It soon rushed out of it again and entered a beautiful piece of country which was diversified by lakelet and rivulet, hill and vale, with rich meadow lands in the hollows, where cattle browsed or lay in the evening sunshine.

The train drew up sharply at a small road-side station. There was no one to get into the cars there, and no one to get out except our two waifs. On the road beyond stood a wagon with a couple of spanking bays in it. On the platform stood a broad-shouldered, deep-chested, short-legged farmer with a face like the sun, and a wide-awake on the back of his bald head.

“Mr Merryboy, I presume?” said the Guardian, descending from the car.

“The same. Glad to see you. Are these my boys?”

He spoke in a quick, hearty, off-hand manner, but Bobby and Tim hated him at once, for were they not on the point of leaving their last and best friend, and was not this man the cause?

They turned to their Guardian to say farewell, and, even to their own surprise, burst into tears.

“God bless you, dear boys,” he said, while the guard held open the door of the car as if to suggest haste; “good-bye. It won’t be very long I think before I see you again. Farewell.”

He sprang into the car, the train glided away, and the two waifs stood looking wistfully after it with the first feelings of desolation that had entered their hearts since landing in Canada.

“My poor lads,” said Mr Merryboy, laying a hand on the shoulder of each, “come along with me. Home is only six miles off, and I’ve got a pair of spanking horses that will trundle us over in no time.”

The tone of voice, to say nothing of “home” and “spanking horses,” improved matters greatly. Both boys thought, as they entered the wagon, that they did not hate him quite so much as at first.

The bays proved worthy of their master’s praise. They went over the road through the forest in grand style, and in little more than half an hour landed Bobby and Tim at the door of their Canadian home.

It was dark by that time, and the ruddy light that shone in the windows and that streamed through the door as it opened to receive them seemed to our waifs like a gleam of celestial light.

Chapter Nineteen.

At Home in Canada

The family of Mr Merryboy was a small one. Besides those who assisted him on the farm—and who were in some cases temporary servants—his household consisted of his wife, his aged mother, a female servant, and a small girl. The latter was a diamond from the London diggings, who had been imported the year before. She was undergoing the process of being polished, and gave promise of soon becoming a very valuable gem. It was this that induced her employer to secure our two masculine gems from the same diggings.

Mrs Merryboy was a vigorous, hearty, able-bodied lady, who loved work very much for the mere exercise it afforded her; who, like her husband, was constitutionally kind, and whose mind was of that serious type which takes concern with the souls of the people with whom it has to do as well as with their bodies. Hence she gave her waif a daily lesson in religious and secular knowledge; she reduced work on the Sabbath-days to the lowest possible point in the establishment, and induced her husband, who was a little shy as well as bluff and off-hand, to institute family worship, besides hanging on her walls here and there sweet and striking texts from the Word of God.

Old Mrs Merryboy, the mother, must have been a merry girl in her youth; for, even though at the age of eighty and partially deaf, she was extremely fond of a joke, practical or otherwise, and had her face so seamed with the lines of appreciative humour, and her nutcracker mouth so set in a smile of amiable fun, and her coal-black eyes so lit up with the fires of unutterable wit, that a mere glance at her stirred up your sources of comicality to their depths, while a steady gaze usually resulted in a laugh, in which she was sure to join with an apparent belief that, whatever the joke might be, it was uncommonly good. She did not speak much. Her looks and smiles rendered speech almost unnecessary. Her figure was unusually diminutive.

Little Martha, the waif, was one of those mild, reticent, tiny things that one feels a desire to fondle without knowing why. Her very small face was always, and, as Bobby remarked, awfully grave, yet a ready smile must have lurked close at hand somewhere, for it could be evoked by the smallest provocation at any time, but fled the instant the provoking cause ceased. She seldom laughed, but when she did the burst was a hearty one, and over immediately. Her brown hair was smooth, her brown eyes were gentle, her red mouth was small and round. Obedience was ingrained in her nature. Original action seemed never to have entered her imagination. She appeared to have been born with the idea that her sphere in life was to do as she was directed. To resist and fight were to her impossibilities. To be defended and kissed seemed to be her natural perquisites. Yet her early life had been calculated to foster other and far different qualities, as we shall learn ere long.

Tim Lumpy took to this little creature amazingly. She was so little that by contrast he became quite big, and felt so! When in Martha’s presence he absolutely felt big and like a lion, a roaring lion capable of defending her against all comers! Bobby was also attracted by her, but in a comparatively mild degree.

On the morning after their arrival the two boys awoke to find that the windows of their separate little rooms opened upon a magnificent prospect of wood and water, and that, the partition of their apartment consisting of a single plank-wall, with sundry knots knocked out, they were not only able to converse freely, but to peep at each other awkwardly—facts which they had not observed the night before, owing to sleepiness.

“I say, Tim,” said Bob, “you seem to have a jolly place in there.”

“First-rate,” replied Tim, “an’ much the same as your own. I had a good squint at you before you awoke. Isn’t the place splendacious?”

“Yes, Tim, it is. I’ve been lookin’ about all the mornin’ for Adam an’ Eve, but can’t see ’em nowhere.”

“What d’ee mean?”

“Why, that we’ve got into the garden of Eden, to be sure.”

“Oh! stoopid,” returned Tim, “don’t you know that they was both banished from Eden?”

“So they was. I forgot that. Well, it don’t much matter, for there’s a prettier girl than Eve here. Don’t you see her? Martha, I think they called her—down there by the summer-’ouse, feedin’ the hanimals, or givin’ ’em their names.”