His Big Opportunity | Page 9

bottom of the hill over there. Her husband has been ill of consumption these last two years, and she works to support them both. She's a hard-working woman, is Martha Cullen; she works in the fields harvesting just now; if I could feel I'd be welcome I would go to sit with her husband sometimes, but she's very queer, she won't let a neighbor come near him, I have tried more than once. It seems hard on him to be bedridden there day after day without a soul to speak to; or any one to give him a drink!"
Roy gazed thoughtfully after the retreating figure of the woman, and then turned his attention again to the cave.
When an hour later he and Dudley were walking home footsore, and rather dirty, but with little bundles of treasures from the cave in their grubby hands, he startled his cousin by saying--
"To-morrow we'll go and see Martha Cullen's husband. It's an opportunity for us."
"How shall we get in?" queried Dudley.
"Climb in at the window. She told old Principle she would be out all day at Farmer Stubbs. We'll go and do him good."
"How?"
"We'll wash his face, and make him a cup of tea, and sweep his room, and give him his medicine," responded Roy, readily; "that's what nurse does when she goes to visit any of Aunt Judy's sick people."
Dudley did not look as if he relished the prospect before him.
"That's girls' and women's work," he said; "boys needn't do that kind of thing."
Roy flushed up angrily.
"All right, if you don't want to come, stay at home. It is a week since we started to do good when the opportunity came, and we haven't done any good to any one. I'm not going to waste any more time."
Then after a pause he added, "Besides I think it will be rather fun breaking into a strange cottage; we may have to get down the chimney."
At this Dudley's face cleared.
"I'll come," he said; "we'll go directly after dinner."
"And we'll stow away a little of our pudding to take him--sick people always have puddings."
They had no difficulty in carrying out this plan. They always dined in the nursery, and if nurse wondered at the amount of pudding that her charges managed to consume that day, her old eyes were not sharp enough to detect the transfer from plates to pockets. She sent them out into the garden to play, and they soon were scampering out of the back gate and along the road toward the little cottage at the bottom of the hill.
It was a warm afternoon, and when they at length came near it they threw themselves down on the grass to rest.
"We mustn't frighten the old man," said Dudley, gazing at the thatched cottage with a critical eye. "I see the windows are tight shut in front, but there's one open at the side; we must creep up very quietly and get in before he sees us, and then we can explain who we are."
"And if the window won't do, we'll try the chimney, it looks a jolly big one."
Then after a pause--
"I suppose he'll be glad to see us?"
"Of course he will. He must be dreadfully dull all alone."
A few minutes after, they were holding a whispered consultation outside a small pantry window through which Roy was going to squeeze himself.
"I'll go first. It will be a tight fit for you, Dudley, but I'll give you a good pull through, and you must hold your breath well in."
"It's a kind of housebreaking," Dudley said, ripples of fun passing over his face; "I don't mind visiting sick people if we go in at their windows like this!"
But Roy's little face was full of anxious gravity and purpose, and he checked Dudley's inclination to laugh at once.
He accomplished his part successfully, and then poor Dudley was hauled and pulled at till purple in the face, and breathless with exertion, he exclaimed, "I'm being squashed to a jelly; let go, I can't do it!"
"Just one more try--now then--there, we've done it!"
But Roy's exclamation of delight was drowned in an awful crash, as Dudley swept off some shelves a bowl of milk, two plates, and a cup of soup, and fell to the ground himself in the midst of it all.
Immediately a man's voice called out, "Who's there! Hi! Help! Thieves! Help!"
Roy darted into the kitchen, and confronted a tall, hollow-cheeked man who had scrambled out of his bed in the chimney corner, and stood trembling from head to foot clutching hold of the bed-post, and coughing violently.
He did not seem at all appeased at the sight of the boys, but shook his fist at them in a paroxysm of fright and rage.
"Go away, you young blackguards--a robbin' honest folk, and a darin' to show yer impudent