His Big Opportunity
Copyright© 2024 by Amy Le Feuvre
Chapter 3: Making an Opportunity
It was two days before Dudley was allowed to see the little invalid. The doctor had been in constant attendance; but all danger was over now, and Roy as usual was rapidly picking up his strength again.
“His constitution has wonderful rallying powers,” the old doctor said; “he is like a bit of india rubber!”
It seemed to Dudley that Roy’s face had got wonderfully white and small; and there was a weary worn look in his eyes, as he turned round to greet him.
“Now sit down and talk to him, but don’t let him do the talking,” was nurse’s advice as she left the boys together.
Dudley sat down by the bed, and squeezed hold of the little hand held out to him.
“I’m so sorry, old chap,” he said, nervously; “do you feel really better? I’ve been so miserable.”
“I’m first-rate now,” was the cheerful response; “it’s awfully nice getting your breath back again; it’s only made me feel a little tired, that’s all!”
“It was all me!”
“Why that has been my comfort,” said Roy, with shining eyes; “I felt when I was very bad, that if I died, I might have lived for something. It would have been lovely to die for you, Dudley—at least you know to have got myself ill from that reason; it’s so very tame when I get bad from nothing at all; but I’m well again now, so I know God is letting me live to do something else!”
“I was the one that ought to have been made ill to punish me,” blurted out Dudley, and then he was silent.
Roy’s eyes rested on his flushed face with some wonder.
“It wasn’t wicked of you to fall into the river; you couldn’t help it.”
A crimson flush crept over Dudley’s face up to the very roots of his hair; he picked the fringe of the counterpane restlessly between his fingers, and kicked his heels against the legs of his chair. Silence again: Roy looked steadily at him; and then an expression of astonishment and bewilderment flitted across his face, followed by one of strange, conviction.
“Dudley, look at me.”
Roy’s tone was peremptory, but Dudley never moved, until the command was given in a sharper tone. Then he raised his head, but his blue eyes had a guilty harassed look in them, and he dropped them quickly again.
“It’s no good; I’ve found you out. Did you tie up your feet like that yourself?”
After a minute, in a sepulchral tone, came the words, “Yes, when you weren’t looking!”
Roy lay back on his pillows with a sigh.
A little disappointment mingled with his feelings which were somewhat mixed. After a pause, he said, “You are a good fellow! To think of doing that for me! What would you have done if I hadn’t jumped in to save you?”
Then Dudley raised his head:
“I knew you wouldn’t fail me,” he said, triumphantly; “I knew I could trust you!”
Roy put out his thin little arm and drew Dudley’s bonny face down by the side of his on the pillow.
“I don’t think,” he whispered, “that even I could have been plucky enough to do that—not in sight of that old mill wheel!”
Neither spoke for a few minutes; then Dudley said,
“I should have been your murderer if you had died. That has been the worst of it. But you did like saving a drowning fellow, didn’t you?”
“Ye-es, but it wasn’t quite real—at least it isn’t as if you really had tumbled in by accident.”
“Well but I only did what you said we must do. I made an opportunity.”
And after this remark Roy had nothing more to say; but neither he nor Dudley ever enlightened any one as to the true cause of the accident.
When Roy had quite recovered, the two boys set out one afternoon to visit their greatest friend in the village. This was the old man every one called “old Principle.” He lived by himself in a curious three-cornered house at the extreme end of the village, and kept a little general shop where everything but eatables could be obtained.
“I keep every article that man, woman, or child can want for their use, for their homes, their work or their play; but food and drink I will not cater for. It’s against my principles to sell perishable goods, and I will not be the one to minister to the very lowest animal wants of my fellow creatures.”
This was his favorite speech, from which it may be judged he was somewhat of a character.
He had several hobbies, and was a well-read man and superior to those around him; and perhaps this was the cause of his holding himself aloof from most of the villagers. They termed him “cranky and cracked,” but his goods were always acceptable, and he was thoroughly successful in his business. When his shop was closed he would go out on the hills, and there spend his time studying geology and botany. He knew the name of every plant and insect, and the strata of the earth for many miles round; and it was out of doors that the boys first made his acquaintance.
They found him on this afternoon seated behind his counter mending an eight-day clock.
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