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.