“But now you have come she’ll soon get well again, please God,” said Barbara, though her own heart beat tremulously as she made her way round by the back entrance.

It was Toby after all who “broke” the happy tidings.  In spite of all Barbara could do—­of all her “Hush, Toby, then,"’s “Gently my little doggie,"’s—­he would rush in to the parlour as soon as the door was opened in such a rapture of joyful barking, tail wagging and rushing and dashing, that Grandmamma looked up from the knitting she was trying to fancy she was doing in her arm-chair by the fire, and Grandpapa put down his five days’ old newspaper which he was reading by the window, with a curious flutter of sudden hope all through them, notwithstanding their many disappointments.

“It is you, Barbara, back again at last,” began Grandmamma.  “How white you look, my poor Barbara—­and—­why, what’s the matter with Toby?  Is he so pleased to see us old people again?”

“He is very pleased, ma’am—­he’s a very wise and a very good feeling dog is Toby, there’s no doubt.  And one that knows when to be sad and—­and when to be rejoiced, as I might say,” said Barbara, though her voice trembled with the effort to speak calmly.

Something seemed to flash across the room to Grandmamma as Mrs. Twiss spoke—­down fell the knitting, the needles, and the wool, all in a tangle, as the old lady started to her feet.

“Barbara—­Barbara Twiss!” she cried.  “What do you mean?  Oh Barbara, you have news of our darlings?  Marmaduke, my dear husband, do you hear?” and she raised her voice, “she has brought us news at last,” and Grandmamma tottered forward a few steps and then, growing suddenly dazed and giddy, would have fallen had not Grandpapa and Barbara started towards her from different sides and caught her.  But she soon recovered herself, and eagerly signed to Barbara to “tell.”  How Barbara told she never knew.  It seemed to her that Grandmamma guessed the words before she spoke them, and looking back on it all afterwards she could recollect nothing but a sort of joyous confusion—­Grandpapa rushing out without his hat, but stopping to take his stick all the same—­Grandmamma holding by the table to steady herself when, in another moment, they were all back again—­then a cluster all together—­of Grandpapa, Grandmamma, Duke, Pamela and Barbara, with Nurse and Biddy, and Dymock and Cook, and stable-boys and gardeners, and everybody, and Toby everywhere at once.  Broken words and sobs and kisses and tears and blessings all together, and Pamela’s little soft high voice sounding above all as she cried—­

“Oh, dear Grandmamma, us is so glad you are not dead.  Duke was so afraid you might be.”

And Tim—­where was he?—­standing outside in the porch, but smiling to himself—­not afraid of being forgotten, for he had a trustful nature.

“It’s easy to see as the old gentleman and lady is terrible fond of master and missy,” he thought.  “But they must be terrible clever folk in these parts to have writing outside of the house even,” for his glance had fallen on the quaintly-carved letters on the lintel, “Niks sonder Arbitt.”  “I wonder now what that there writing says,” he reflected.