Roy’s delicate health was a cause of great anxiety to his grandmother, and if it had not been for Miss Bertram’s wise tact and judgment, he would have been imprisoned in one room and swathed in cotton wool most of the year round.  He had the advantage of having an old nurse who had brought him up from his birth, and had come from Canada with him; and she was as vigilant and experienced in managing his ailments as could be desired.  Poor little Roy, with his uncertain health, was heir to a very large property of his father’s not far away; and the responsibilities awaiting him, and the knowledge that he would have so much power in his hands, perhaps had the effect of making him weigh life more seriously than would most boys of his age.

Later on after their visit to their grandmother was over, and tea had been finished in the nursery, he wandered into his own little room, and leaning out of his window, looked up into the clear sky above.

“I feel so small,” was his wistful thought, “and heaven is so big; but I’ll do something big enough to get, ’Well done good and faithful servant,’ said to me when I die, I hope.  And I’ll try every day till I do it!”

II

A SONG

“Come here, boys.  I have had some new music from town, and here is a song that you will like to listen to, I expect.”

It was Miss Bertram who spoke, and her appearance in the nursery just saved a free fight.  Wet afternoons were always a sore trial to the boys:  their mornings were generally spent at the Rectory under Mr. Selby’s tuition, but their afternoons were their own, and it was hard to be kept within four walls, and expected to make no sound to disturb their grandmother’s afternoon nap.

The old nurse was nodding in her chair, and her charges with jackets off and rolled up shirt sleeves were advancing toward each other on tiptoe, and muttering their threats in wrathful whispers.

“I’ll show you I’m no coddle!”

“And I’ll show you I’m no lazy lubber!”

At the sound of their aunt’s voice they stopped; and each picked up his jacket with some confusion, Dudley saying contentedly, “All right, old fellow, pax now, and we’ll finish it up to-morrow.”

“Aunt Judy, do let us come into the drawing-room then, and hear you sing; we’re sick of this old nursery, we’re too big to be kept here.”

Roy spoke scornfully, but his aunt shook her head at him: 

“Do you know this is the room I love best in the house?  Your father and I used it till we were double your age, and no place ever came up to it in our estimation.  Don’t be little prigs and think yourselves men before you’re boys!”

“Why, Aunt Judy, we’ve been boys ever since we were born!”

“I look upon you as infants now,” retorted Miss Bertram, laughing.  “Come along—­tiptoe past granny’s room, please, and no racing downstairs.”