His Big Opportunity
Copyright© 2024 by Amy Le Feuvre
Chapter 7: A Walnut Stoky
“I say, Dudley, do come out for a ride! Aunt Judy is with granny, and she says the house must be quiet, and I hate being in a quiet house. Come on! What are you doing?”
Roy finished his sentence by springing on Dudley’s back, and as he was in a crouching attitude in a corner of the old nursery, he brought him flat to the ground by his unexpected attack. For a minute or two both boys rolled on the ground in each other’s clutches, and feet and hands were having a busy time of it. Then Dudley sprang to his feet.
“I like you coming in to tell me to be quiet, and then beginning a fight at once! Do shut up! You’ve quite spoilt my last letter!”
“Well, what are you doing?”
“I’m carving my name in the corner here, just below my father’s.”
Roy looked with curiosity at Dudley’s handiwork.
“Yes, your M is very crooked; but I wouldn’t choose to write my name on the wainscoting. It’s too low down. I like to be at the top of everything. Now if you carved it on the ceiling that would be something like!”
“You’re always wanting to do impossibilities!”
“I should like to have a try at them,” rejoined Roy, quickly. “I hate everything that is easy. Now come on, do! and we’ll have a good gallop over the down!”
Half an hour later and the boys were tearing through the village on their ponies, and were soon out on an open expanse of heather and grass.
Roy was in the midst of an eloquent harangue on all he was going to do when he was grown up, when Dudley suddenly came to a standstill.
“Something is the matter with Hazel. I believe she’s going lame. Oh, I see, one of her shoes is loose! Now what are we to do!”
He sprang off his pony as he spoke, and looked perplexed at this calamity.
“Lead her on gently,” was Roy’s ready advice. “We aren’t far off from C----, and I know there’s a blacksmith there.”
Dudley grumbled a little at having his ride spoiled in this fashion; but it was not long before they reached the neighboring village, and the smith’s forge was soon found.
Then, whilst Hazel was being attended to, Roy suggested that they should go and see an old lady, a great friend of their aunt’s, who lived just outside the village.
“She might ask us to tea,” suggested Roy, “and she has awfully nice cake always going. I’ll leave my pony here, and we’ll call again for them on our way back.”
“I don’t like paying visits,” objected Dudley, a little crossly.
“But Mrs. Ford isn’t half bad to talk to, she’s full of stories.”
And by dint of these two baits, “cake” and “stories,” Dudley’s shyness was overcome, and the two boys were soon walking up a sunny little garden and knocking at the rose-covered door of “Clematis Cottage.”
It was a tiny house, but spotlessly clean and tidy, and the long, low, dainty drawing-room into which they were shown had a sense of rest and repose which insensibly affected even the boys’ restless spirits.
“A nice room to be ill in,” was Roy’s comment; “there would be such a lot of jolly pictures and things to look at on the walls when you were in bed.”
“I should like to sit here on Sunday,” said Dudley. “I am sure I could be still for quite half an hour!”
The door opened and a little old lady in widow’s cap and gown came forward. She was a fragile, delicate-looking little woman, with a very bright face and smile, and she beamed upon the boys delightedly.
“My dear boys, this is quite a treat! I don’t often get a visit from young gentlemen. How is your grandmother? Have you brought me any message from your aunt?”
“Granny is not very well to-day,” replied Roy, frankly, “and Aunt Judy didn’t know we were coming here. We have been riding, and Dudley’s pony has had to be shod, so we’ve left him at the blacksmith’s and come on here. You see we thought it would pass the time.”
“And so it will, and you shall have a nice cup of tea before you go back. Why, what big boys you are growing! Which is the elder? I always forget.”
“I am,” said Roy, a little shamefacedly; “but of course most people think Dudley is, because he is the biggest.”
“It’s only two months and five days, though, between us,” put in Dudley, eagerly, knowing what a sore point his size was to Roy; “and you see, Mrs. Ford, Roy’s brain is much bigger than mine—Mr. Selby says it is, so that makes us quits!”
“And I wonder which has the biggest soul?” said Mrs. Ford, quaintly.
The boys stared at her.
“Shall I tell you a little story while we are waiting for tea?” she asked, sitting down in her easy chair by the open window, and looking first at the boys with loving interest, and then away to the sweet country outside her garden.
Roy gave Dudley a delighted nudge with his elbow.
“Yes, please; we love a good rattling story; and make plenty of adventures in it, won’t you?”
But Mrs. Ford shook her head with a little smile.
“I can’t tell you of fights with red Indians, and shipwrecks, and lion hunts, and all such things as that; but you must take my story as it is, and think over it in your quiet moments.
“There was once an old garden. Flowers and fruit of every description grew in it, and when no human creature was about the air was full of flower laughter and fruit conversation. One day in autumn some saucy sparrows were teasing a young walnut-tree that stood between an apple and a pear-tree, opposite a wall which was covered with beautiful golden plums.
“‘What are you here for?’ they said, pecking at the round green balls that hung on the tree, and then wiping their beaks in disgust on the grass underneath. ‘Ugh! you’re sour and bitter and nasty enough to poison a person! You’re a disgrace to your master. The red and yellow apples next door to you are delicious this warm day, and the pears make one’s mouth fairly water, while as to the plums over there—well, every one is fighting for them, from the slugs and snails to every bird in the country, and the boys and girls and men and women—all of us have to be kept off by those horrible nets which the old gardener is continually spreading!’
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