Page:The railway children (IA railwaychildren00nesb 1).pdf/322

 "There weren't any letters this morning. "Oh! Daddy! it is really you, isn't it?"

The clasp of a hand she had not forgotten assured her that it was.

"You must go in by yourself, Bobbie, and tell Mother quite quietly that it's all right. They've caught the man who did it. Every one knows now that it wasn't your Daddy."

"I always knew it wasn't," said Bobbie. "Me and Mother and our old gentleman."

"Yes," he said, "it's all his doing. Mother wrote and told me you had found out. And she told me what you'd been to her. My own little girl!" They stopped a minute then.

And now I see them crossing the field. Bobbie goes into the house, trying to keep her eyes from speaking before her lips have found the right words to "tell Mother quite quietly" that the sorrow and the struggle and the parting are over and done, and that Father has come home.

I see Father walking in the garden, waiting—waiting. He is looking at the flowers, and each flower is a miracle to eyes that all these months of Spring and Summer have seen only flag-stones and gravel and a little grudging grass. But his eyes keep turning towards the house. And presently