Accordingly they managed to vault over the iron railings, get on to the roadside, and in course of time to reach Stoke Farm. The dogs rushed out to meet them. But Dan and Beersheba were sagacious beasts. They hated frivolity, they hated unfeeling people, but they respected great sorrow; and when Hetty said with a burst of tears, "Oh, Dan, Dan, darling Dan, Betty, your Betty and ours, is so dreadfully ill!" Dan fawned upon the little girl, licked her hands, and looked into her face with all the pathos in the world in his brown doggy eyes. Beersheba, of course, followed his brother's example. So the poor little twins, accompanied by the dogs, entered Mrs. Miles's kitchen. Mrs. Miles sprang up with a cry of rapture and surprise at the sight of them. "Why, my dears! my dears!" she said. "And wherever is the elder of you? Where do she be? Oh, then it's me is right glad to see you both!" "We want to talk to you, Mrs. Miles," said Sylvia. "And we want to kiss you, Mrs. Miles," said Hester. Then they flung themselves upon her and burst into floods of most bitter weeping. Mrs. Miles had not brought up a large family of children for nothing. She was accustomed to childish griefs. She knew how violent, how tempestuous, such griefs might be, and yet how quickly the storms would pass, the sunshine come, and how smiles would replace tears. She treated the twins, therefore, now, just as though they were her own children. She allowed them to cry on her breast, and murmured, "Dear, dear! Poor lambs! poor lambs! Now, this is dreadful bad, to be sure! But don't you mind how many tears you shed when you've got Mrs. Miles close to you. Cry on, pretties, cry on, and God comfort you!" So the children, who felt so lonely and desolate, did cry until they could cry no longer. Then Mrs. Miles immediately did the sort of thing she invariably found effectual in the case of her own children. She put the exhausted girls into a comfortable chair each by the fire, and brought them some hot milk and a slice of seed-cake, and told them they must sip the milk and eat the cake before they said any more. Now, as a matter of fact, Sylvia and Hetty were, without knowing it in the least, in a starving condition. From the instant that Betty's serious illness was announced they had absolutely refused all food, turning from it with loathing. Supper the night before was not for them, and breakfast had remained untasted that morning. Mrs. Miles had therefore done the right thing when she provided them with a comforting and nourishing meal. They would have refused to touch the cake had one of their schoolfellows offered it, but they obeyed Mrs. Miles just as though she were their real mother.