His Big Opportunity
Copyright© 2024 by Amy Le Feuvre
Chapter 4: An Awkward Visit
“And how do you know a river has been here?”
“By the soil and by the relics I have found. Look at this fossil. Do you see the outline of the fish? Fish don’t live on dry ground.”
“There might have been a fishman passing by who dropped one out of his cart.”
Old Principle laughed at Dudley’s sceptical notion, and went on shovelling out earth with great alacrity. It was Saturday afternoon: old Principle had shut up his shop and taken the boys up to the hills surrounding the little village, where in a ravine between two precipitous crags, in the midst of a green bower of ferns and moss, he was hard at work excavating an old cave that had been buried for many years out of sight.
Dudley and Roy were eagerly helping and chattering as only boys know how.
“This little ravine has been formed by a mountain stream rushing down,” continued the old man, resting on his spade for a minute; “‘tis a good principle, Master Dudley, to trust grown-up folks’ knowledge better than your own.”
“I wish,” said Roy, reflectively, “that this cave was nearer home; it would be so lovely to come out whenever we wanted to, wouldn’t it, Dudley? Perhaps some king has hidden away in it, or soldier when he was pursued by his enemies!”
“Hulloo,” said Dudley, looking up the hill; “here is such a funny looking woman coming down with a donkey, her skirt is nearly up to her knees, and she has a man’s boots on.”
Old Principle paused in his work, and in a minute or two greeted the newcomer.
“Good-afternoon, Mrs. Cullen, how’s your husband to-day?”
“Badly, very badly, but I’s forced to leave he. I lock the door and put the key in me pocket, for I’s bin up the hill yonner cuttin’ peat sin seven o’clock this mornin’. He do get awfu’ lonesome, he say, an’ if me niece hadn’t a married and gone to ‘Merica, I should have kept she to tend him.”
“Who is she?” asked Roy, as after a few more words the woman moved on.
“She lives at the 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 faces, and disturbin’ a dyin’ man, knowin’ as he’s too bad to give yer the hidin’ ye desarve!”
Roy was quite taken aback.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.