But good Sir John did not understand all this, not being a fellow
of the Linnaean Society; and he took it into his head that Tom was
drowned. When they looked into the empty pockets of his shell, and
found no jewels there, nor money--nothing but three marbles, and a
brass button with a string to it--then Sir John did something as
like crying as ever he did in his life, and blamed himself more
bitterly than he need have done. So he cried, and the groom-boy
cried, and the huntsman cried, and the dame cried, and the little
girl cried, and the dairymaid cried, and the old nurse cried (for
it was somewhat her fault), and my lady cried, for though people
have wigs, that is no reason why they should not have hearts; but
the keeper did not cry, though he had been so good-natured to Tom
the morning before; for he was so dried up with running after
poachers, that you could no more get tears out of him than milk out
of leather: and Grimes did not cry, for Sir John gave him ten
pounds, and he drank it all in a week. Sir John sent, far and
wide, to find Tom's father and mother: but he might have looked
till Doomsday for them, for one was dead, and the other was in
Botany Bay. And the little girl would not play with her dolls for
a whole week, and never forgot poor little Tom. And soon my lady
put a pretty little tombstone over Tom's shell in the little
churchyard in Vendale, where the old dalesmen all sleep side by
side between the lime-stone crags. And the dame decked it with
garlands every Sunday, till she grew so old that she could not stir
abroad; then the little children decked it, for her. And always
she sang an old old song, as she sat spinning what she called her
wedding-dress. The children could not understand it, but they
liked it none the less for that; for it was very sweet, and very
sad; and that was enough for them. And these are the words of it:-