“You’ve been far too long with him already, to my mind,” she said; “if Miss Bertram wasn’t beside herself she would never have given you permission at all; he ought to have been kept extra quiet, and he’s worked himself all in a fever again.”  She put Roy gently back on his pillows, and did not notice in her short-sightedness the roll of paper being stuffed under his pillow.  Dudley’s spirits sank to zero, now he was about to be dismissed.

“Good-bye, Roy, ask to see me again, won’t you?”

Roy held out his hand.

“I’ll talk about it to-morrow,” he said, faintly.

And Dudley crept out of the room feeling more forlorn and wretched than ever.

X

A CRIPPLE

It was all over; two doctors had been closetted in the bedroom for a very long time, and then Dudley and Rob, sitting on the garden steps, were told that everything had been successfully carried out, and Roy was as well and better than had been expected.

“I never saw such fortitude and calm self-control in my life,” said Miss Bertram to her mother; “it was unnatural for a child of his age!”

“He is a true Bertram in spirit,” said the grandmother, proudly; then she added with a sigh, “but, alas, not in body.”

“Nurse,” said Dudley that night as he was creeping into bed under her charge; “is Roy going to die?”

“I hope not,” answered nurse, a little tearfully.  “Doctor Grant says he’ll make a good recovery, but he whispered himself to me—­Master Roy did just before he took the sleeping draught—­’Nurse I’ll have my leg buried with me!’ he says.”

Dudley was silent for a minute, then he asked, solemnly, “And where is it, nurse?”

Nurse turned upon him tearfully and angrily,

“I believe as how you haven’t one speck of feeling for that blessed darling, you naughty boy!  To talk of such a thing in such a way with not a tear on your face!  And to think of him laying there a helpless cripple, and him the owner of the biggest estate in the county!”

Dudley crept into bed feeling he had no more tears to shed, wondering when he would be allowed to see Roy again, and also wondering who was the possessor of his lost leg.

It was a fortnight before he was allowed to see the little invalid, and when the boys met, Dudley gazed with deep pity on Roy’s white little face, looking smaller and whiter than ever.  But he welcomed him with a smile.

“It’s years since you were here, old chap.”

“Yes,” responded Dudley, “and it’s been the most miserablest years of my life.”

“I thought I was going to die then,” continued Roy, with still the same smile; “but God wouldn’t let me.  He was determined I should live, and do you know I’ve been thinking it out.  I really believe it is because He is going to let me do something great still.  And Doctor Grant has been telling me of a man in Parliament who took all the house by storm, and brought in a most wonderful law that thousands of people blessed him for, and he—­he had a cork leg!”