"'Well, Mary,' said the farmer heartily, 'father will come and see us; and as for your old home, why, you get a new one in exchange, and fair exchange is no robbery, you know. Then for your ragged children, why, I'm wanting an active, steady boy on my farm, and though I've no great fancy for your pale-faced Londoners, yet if you know any really good one, we'll take him down with us into Kent.'

"You should have seen how much pleased the young teacher looked! She knew one, she said, a poor motherless boy,-- she would be so glad to give him a helping hand. He was one of the best boys in the school,-- she would trust him in a room full of gold!

"So it was agreed between them that she should speak to the lad, and tell him to call in the evening.

"In the evening he accordingly came. I had again taken my place under the farmer's chair, and was just falling into a doze, when I was roused by a gentle knock at the door. Mary's cheerful 'Come in!' was followed by the entrance of,-- whom do you think?"

"Bob and Billy!" I exclaimed at a venture.

"Yes, Bob and Billy!" repeated Oddity, with a look of great glee; "I had never thought to have seen them again! And they were so changed, I should scarcely have known them. Bob, in particular, looked so much taller, and stronger, and oh! so much happier than he had done last year! He was no more the wretched, joyless, hopeless creature, cowering in rags, one that even rats might look on with pity; he had a bright, fearless eye, and hopeful smile; and if ever a face expressed grat.i.tude and affection, it was his when he looked on his gentle young teacher!

"'I beg pardon for bringing Billy,' said he, modestly but frankly, 'I was afraid to let him go home quite alone.'

"The farmer spoke in his kindly manner to the boy. He offered him a place on his farm, and Bob's eyes sparkled, and his cheek flushed with pleasure. It was but for a minute; the brightness and the glow faded away as he glanced down at his little lame brother. I saw that Billy was squeezing his hand,-- that squeeze served all the purpose of words.

"'Thank 'ee, sir,' said the boy, glancing first at the farmer, then at his teacher, 'but I think as how-- I should rather-- leastways I had better stay and earn my bread here in Lunnon.'

"'And how do you earn it?' inquired the farmer.

"'Please, sir, I clean boots,'* answered the boy; 'I am one of the yellow brigade.'

"There was such a look of cheerful independence on the little fellow's face, that no one could have glanced at him and doubted that his bread was honestly earned.

"'And would you rather stay here and rub in blacking,' said the farmer, 'than be out in the open fields? Yours is an odd taste, I take it! Would you not rather come with us?'

"'Oh, sir!' said Bob, uneasily, shifting from one foot to the other, while Billy was squeezing his hand harder than ever, and looking half ready to cry, as he pressed closer to his side; 'you see I could not leave him behind,-- poor lame Billy, he's no one to care for him but me.'

"'That's it, is it!' cried the farmer, clapping his knee. 'Well, Mary, what say you? could we take the two with us do you think? If they've always been together, poor fellows, 'twould be a pity to part them now!'

"Bob's only answer was a look of pleasure and grat.i.tude, but little Billy almost burst into tears of delight as he exclaimed, 'Oh, yes!

please, sir, take me too!-- take me too! I'll do anything,-- I'll work,-- I'll make baskets for your fruit.'

"'And coops for my poultry, hey? We'll find some way of making you useful.' And he turned to Mary with that smile which I think that all human beings wear when they are doing some act of kindness.

"I was so much pleased," continued Oddity, "at this conclusion to the affair, that I ran out from my place beneath the chair. Billy uttered a cry of surprise:

"'There-- look! if that an't my own pretty spotted rat!'"

Here I rather rudely interrupted my piebald brother. "Pretty! did he call you pretty? well, well, I shall be obliged to think you so myself, I suppose. Spared by a man, petted by a woman, admired by a child,-- and all for your beauty,-- Oddity's beauty!" I could not help laughing outright at the thought.

"My ugliness has at least done me no harm," he replied, with a meekness which made me more ashamed of my rudeness than if he had fired up at my ridicule.

"And so you live all together here?" said Whiskerandos; "this farmer, his wife, the two boys, and you?"

"Yes, and we are as happy as the day is long."

"Humph!" said Whiskerandos; "I should prefer my wild freedom; but it is different, I suppose, with man. And as for you, Oddity, you were never like other rats; you were always intended for a watch-dog. And you really guard that can and parcel for hours, and resist the temptation to nibble?"

"I am trusted," was the simple reply.

"Now, Oddity," said I, "I should much like to see you in your new home, surrounded by all your human companions."

"Yonder is my master's house," answered Oddity, pointing across the field with his nose. "You have but to clamber up to the window in the evening, and peep through the cl.u.s.tering roses, and you will see us all there together."

"I'll have a peep," said Whiskerandos, "and then off to old London again!"

"You must take nothing from my master's house," cried Oddity.

"Not a potato paring!" laughed our valiant companion.

"And now I would advise you to be off," said my brother; "here's my master coming for his dinner."

Away we scampered at full speed, my light-footed comrade and I; for well we knew what was certain to be our fate if caught even by the kind-hearted farmer. We were only rats after all.

[* In the course of a single year no less than _two thousand nine hundred and eighty-one pounds_ were honestly earned in this manner by 132 boys connected with ragged schools!]

CHAPTER XXIII.

A PEEP THROUGH THE ROSES.

That night, when the round harvest moon was throwing her soft light on the earth, we climbed up the rose-tree by the window, and, quietly pushing aside the fragrant flowers, peeped in upon such a scene as rarely meets the eye of a rat.

There was a neat little kitchen, with a sanded floor and white-washed walls, so clean, so perfectly clean, that not even the sharp eyes of the race of Mus could have detected a speck upon them. Rows of plates lined the shelves on the wall, pans burnished till they shone like silver, a framed sampler hung over the mantelpiece, and a large clock merrily ticked behind the door. Near the wide hearth there was a table, on which a substantial supper was spread on a cloth white as new-fallen snow.

Round this table were seated the farmer, his wife, and our two old friends, Bob and Billy, in their clean smock-frocks, with country roses on their once sickly and sunken cheeks. One might have read Will Grange's character in his kind, honest face; and his wife looked like a morning in May, all sweetness, brightness, and beauty,-- such beauty as is not merely skin-deep.

The farmer tapped gaily on the table, and at the signal, Oddity, whom I had not at first perceived, clambered up to his knee, and from thence jumped on the cloth, to be fed from his master's hand. He made his round of the party,-- every one had something to give him; and I heard the merry voice of Billy as he patted his favourite's snub nose,-- "He's a pretty little fellow! now, an't he? I wonder what's become of the old blind rat that he used to lead about in the shed?"

"Whiskerandos," said I, pensively, to my companion, "I could almost wish myself in Oddity's place!"

"So do not I," he replied quickly, as he turned from the window. "One rat in ten millions may be petted and trusted, and show himself worthy of the trust; but our race was never intended by nature to hold the position of lap-dogs or cats."

"And are we always to be hated by the lords of creation, never to be useful to man?"

"We are useful to man," said my companion.

"Ah! in those places where he bakes us in pies, or makes hats or glove-thumbs of our poor skins. But in London--"

"When you join me in London I will show you, friend Ratto, how, by acting the part of a scavenger, and clearing away that which, if left, would poison the air, the race of Mus does good service to man."

"Little man thanks us for it!" cried I.

"Well, Bob," said the farmer, as he leant back in his chair, and watched, with an air of amus.e.m.e.nt, his piebald favourite nibbling at a nut, "is it true what my good wife here tells me, that the post this morning actually brought a letter for you?"