'And now, Bobby, you must always try to be a good boy, and love Jesus Christ, and do what He tells you to. Isn't there a little hymn:

Oh, dearly, dearly has He loved, And we must love Him too, And trust in His redeeming blood, And try His works to do.'

Bobby nodded again.

'I says that to Nurse sometimes, but I never does understand it. And now let's look at the other picshers; but first, please, say the text to me again.'

Lady Isobel repeated it, and Bobby repeated it after her with quiet satisfaction:

'"Blessed are they that wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb, that they may have right to the tree of life, and enter in through the gates into the City."'

Then he wanted to know about the tree of life; and when at length Lady Isobel left him she said to Nurse:

'He is an extraordinary child, Nurse. I feel as if I had been teaching in Sunday-school. I have never done such a thing before in my life!'

Chapter V.

n.o.bBLES' MISFORTUNE.

Bobby was soon up and about again, but he had a great disappointment when one day his friend, Lady Isobel, came to him to wish him good-bye.

'I am going back to India,' she told him; and though her face was grave her eyes were glad.

'Oh!' cried Bobby, clasping her round the neck. 'Take me with you, and then I'll look for my father. Don't go away and leave me, you understand so!'

'If I had not met you I don't believe I should be going,' said Lady Isobel with a smile and a sigh. 'We have helped each other, Bobby. I have discovered that I was fast getting a very selfish woman, and so I'm going to join an old friend of mine in India who has a school for little black children and women, and I'm going to try to make them happy by telling them about your picture of the beautiful golden gates.

Do you think I will be able to explain it properly?'

'Yes,' said Bobby, interested at once; 'same as you did to n.o.bbles and me. They've got black bodies as well as black hearts, haven't they?

Nurse's brother tells me about black peoples. But, oh! I don't want you to go. Everybodies I like goes away; and my father is such a 'normous time coming!'

'Poor little Bobby!'

She caressed his curly head with her hand, and added:

'I will keep a sharp look-out for this father of yours, and send him home to you when I find him.'

'That's what Master Mortimer said; but he's never sent him.'

'Never mind! He'll come back one day,' and with that rather doubtful consolation Lady Isobel kissed him and said good-bye.

Bobby felt very unhappy for a few days after she left, then began to make the best of it, and turned more than ever to his beloved companion, n.o.bbles. One afternoon he sat up in his favourite apple-tree watching the white high-road. Presently two boys came along chasing a poor miserable-looking little dog whose tail was tied to an old saucepan. The boys were pelting the saucepan with stones, and more often than not the stones. .h.i.t the dog, and a yelp of pain was the result.

Bobby's eyes blazed. He forgot his smallness; he only thought of the tortured dog.

Shaking n.o.bbles furiously at them, he leant over the wall and shouted:

'Stop it, you cowards! I tells you to stop! If you don't, I'll come and make you!'

The boys looked up and laughed at the irate little figure.

'Come on!' they cried. 'We're ready for you, little 'un!'

The dog had fled into a ditch now, and cowered beneath some bramble bushes. The boys began to pelt him with stones to make him come out, and Bobby scrambled down from his tree.

'Come on, n.o.bbles,' he said; 'we'll drive them off, me and you together!'

He ran to the orchard gate, clambered over it (for it was locked), and was soon standing over the dog protectingly.

'You shan't touch him. I'll hit you if you do!'

The biggest of the boys laughed at him, and advanced to seize the crouching dog.

Bobby was so angry that he sprang forward and hit him sharply on the shoulder. In an instant the boy, who was a bully by nature, had wrenched his precious stick away from him, and began to belabour him so unmercifully with it that in a moment poor n.o.bbles was snapped in two.

And at this juncture Bobby's aunt came upon the scene. She was returning from the village, and hastened to stop what she believed was a village fight. Her astonishment was great when she saw her small nephew. The village lads at once took to their heels. Bobby, in an agony of fright and woe, stooped to pick up the two pieces of his stick which had been flung upon the ground, and the wretched little dog crept out of his hiding-place.

'Bobby, what is the meaning of this? You fighting with boys on the high-road! Where is your nurse?'

Bobby was beside himself with pa.s.sion and grief. He held out his broken stick.

They've killed mine n.o.bbles! I hate them! I wish I could kill them dead! They was teasing the poor little dog, and me and n.o.bbles ran out to make them stop, and he took n.o.bbles away, and he beat me with n.o.bbles, and broked him dead! And I hate him!'

Bobby literally was beside himself with grief. He flung himself down on the gra.s.s by the roadside, clasping the remains of n.o.bbles in his arms, and sobbed in the most bitter and heart-broken fashion.

Miss Egerton occupied herself with releasing the dog from the saucepan.

It seemed to know who had befriended it, for it crept up to Bobby and began to lick his curly head with a little whine of sympathy. Then Miss Egerton spoke very sharply:

'Get up at once, Bobby, and don't be such a baby! Come indoors with me to Nurse. No, little dog, you are not to follow us; go home, and keep out of the way of boys in future.'

Bobby was too overwhelmed with the fate of n.o.bbles to think of the dog he had rescued, so he followed his aunt through the orchard and garden, and flung himself into the arms of his nurse, who, hearing his sobs, came to meet him.

'He's dead! He's broken in two! Oh, mine n.o.bbles! mine n.o.bbles!'

'Here, Nurse, take him up to the nursery. He has been trying to act as champion to an ill-used dog, and come off rather the worse in the encounter. You must not let him stray into the road by himself. I don't know what his grandmother would say if she had seen him just now.'

Nurse picked up Bobby as if he were a baby and carried him upstairs.

'Hush! now, Master Bobby. Tell me what you've been doing. Let me see n.o.bbles; I expect he can be mended.'

Hope leaped into Bobby's heart; he put the two pieces of stick upon the table. Nurse, seeing his grief, pointed triumphantly to n.o.bble's little smiling face, which was quite uninjured.

'n.o.bbles is all right,' she said. 'We can have a new stick put into him, and he will be better than ever. Look! he's smiling at you to tell you not to cry. Boys of your age ought never to cry; you don't want to be a baby.'

Nurse got her work-basket out, and very cleverly tied n.o.bbles together with a bit of tape.