"No," he said, "they'll never send us home now. Mick'd be put in prison if he took us home. I know that. I heard what they was saying about it one day when they didn't know I was there. And it's too far away--it's a dreadful way away. We can never go home. I daresay Grandpapa and Grandmamma and everybody's dead by now," concluded Duke, who talked with a sort of reckless composure sometimes, altogether too much for Pamela, who burst into tears. "Oh bruvver!" she cried between her sobs, "don't talk like that. I _fink_ God's too good to have let dear Grandpapa and Grandmamma die. And us has said our prayers such many many times about going home. I'm sure Grandpapa would never put Mick in prison if us asked him not, and p'raps if Mick was sure of that he'd take us home. Oh don't you fink us might go and ask him," and she started up. "Us can't promise it; Grandpapa'd _have_ to do it. It'd be his _dooty_," said Duke sternly--his ideas on all subjects were very grim at present--"he'd have to stop Mick going and stealing away other children like he did us. And Diana said us mustn't speak to _nobody_ about what she told us." "I don't care about it if it isn't that us is going home," said Pamela, crying quietly. "I don't care about gold frocks like fairies and all that if dear Grandmamma and Grandpapa can't see us." Duke looked at her gloomily. "P'raps Diana meant us'd soon be going to heaven," he said at last. "I heard them saying us'd 'not stand it long,' and I know that means going to die." "I don't care," sobbed Pamela again, "if Grandpapa and Grandmamma are dead, heaven'd be the best place for us to go to;" and regardless of all Diana had said to her about trying to eat and to keep up her spirits, the little girl let the tin plate, with the greasy meat and gravy, slip off her knees on to the floor, and, leaning her head on the hard wooden bench, she went off in a fit of piteous and hopeless sobbing. In a moment Duke's arms were around her, and he was kissing and hugging and doing his best to console her. "Dear little sister," he cried, "don't be so _very_ unhappy. It was very naughty of me to say dear Grandpapa and Grandmamma and everybody would be dead." "And Toby," interrupted Pamela. "Did you mean Toby too?" Duke considered. "No, I don't think I meant Toby. He must be a good deal younger than Grandpapa and Grandmamma, and I don't think he'd be _quite_ so unhappy about us as they'd be." "If _I'd_ been Toby I'd have come to look for us," said Pamela, crying now less violently. "Us could have wrote a letter and tied it to his collar, and then Grandpapa could have come to look for us. Toby can run so fast," and she was going on to describe what she would have done in Toby's place when the little door of the van opened and Diana reappeared. Her face clouded as she looked at the children.