The boys had sprung down at once from the trap, and were endeavoring to drag the child away when it burst into roars of fright and anger.

“I want mummy—­oh, mummy!”

It was a little girl between three and four.  She had been placidly nursing a doll in the middle of the road, and seemed perfectly oblivious of wind and rain.

“Where do you live?” asked Roy, but the child only continued to wail for its mother.

“Here, Master Roy, you’ll be wet through.  Come back, and let Master Dudley hoist her up to me.  We can’t stop all day trying to find out where she lives.  We’ll take her back with us for the time.”

But this did not please Roy.

“No, we must find her mother; she must come from the village we have passed.  You wait there with the horse, Sanders, and we’ll take her back.”

“Let Master Dudley do it, then,” said Sanders, crossly, “and you get into the trap again.”

This also Roy refused to do.

“It’s an opportunity, isn’t it, Dudley?  And look she has taken hold of my hand; you run on in front and ask about her at the first cottage you come to, and I’ll bring her after you.”

Sanders grumbled and growled, but the boys did not heed him.  Happily the mother of the child soon appeared, thanked them profusely, and Roy and Dudley clambered up into the trap again, both wet through.

“You’re a heedless, disobedient pair,” said the wrathful Sanders, “and if I’m blamed for your taking to your beds and gettin’ rheumaticky fever and inflammation of the lungs, it won’t be my fault, and I shall tell the missus so!”

XV

AN UNWELCOME PROPOSAL

Roy was not well for some time after this episode.  He had a bad bronchial attack, and was in the hands of his old nurse again.

“It do seem as if everything conspires to make you a delicate lad,” she said one day; “it beats me how you come through it as well as you do!  But ’tis mostly your thoughtless ways that leads you into trouble.”

“I’m sorry,” Roy said, cheerfully; “but I expect I’m stronger than I look.  I never shall be much of a fellow, I know; but even with my cork leg I can do a good deal, can’t I?”

“You’re worth two of Master Dudley!” ejaculated the fond nurse, but this assertion was of course questioned.

“I shall never be like Dudley, never!  Not in looks, or strength, or goodness.  He is better than I am all round!”

Miss Bertram came into the room at this moment.

“Ah, nurse,” she said, in her bright, brisk way; “he is like a cat, isn’t he?  Has nine lives, I’m sure.  There never was such a boy for getting into scrapes.  I’m in fear whenever he is out of our sight now that he may never come back again.”

“Now, Aunt Judy, you wouldn’t have liked me not to have got out to that baby?”

“I should like some one else to have done it.”