"And you're the lad for making people better, and doing good to all.

'Tis a bad principle, my boy, to wait for great opportunities, and let the small ones go!"

"Do you think we ought to teach him?" questioned Dudley.

"If he wants to learn, and you have the time, you will be letting the opportunity slip, that's all. And moreover old Principle isn't going to be the one to help you do it."

The old man turned his back upon them and walked into the pine wood again, leaving the two boys gazing after him with perturbed faces.

"He's rather cross this afternoon," observed Dudley.

"I s'pose he thinks it's for our good. Shall we try again? Could you teach him one day, and me the next? That wouldn't be quite so tiring."

Rob was called upon and consulted, and it was finally arranged that every afternoon from two to three he should have a reading lesson on the top of the garden wall.

"We shan't feel sleepy here, and it's the time everybody else is taking a nap," said Roy, trying to take a cheerful view of it. "I'm going to try and be very patient and not be cross once, for you're our opportunity, or one of them, isn't he, Dudley?"

Dudley nodded. "The biggest we've had yet," he said.

Rob grinned and went away delighted. He was a steady, honest lad, devoted to both boys; but especially to Roy, who, without Dudley's constant remonstrance, would have tyrannized over him to his heart's content. Miss Bertram left them alone; she exercised a certain supervision over Rob's work, but never objected to his joining her little nephews' amus.e.m.e.nts.

"They will not learn any harm from him," she told her mother; "and he may teach them many things that are good."

So it came to pa.s.s that reading lessons took place regularly every day on the top of the wall, and Rob's eagerness to master all hard words, and his humble diffidence, when his little teachers waxed wrath with him, was touching to witness. Sometimes conversation would bear a large part in the lessons, especially when Roy was the teacher. And Dudley would always insist on having a break for refreshments.

"You will be able to write letters for me, Rob, when I grow up," said Roy, one afternoon, pausing in the lesson. "I don't like writing letters, and I'm thinking of travelling round the world and discovering countries, so I shall have to write home sometimes. You will come with me, won't you?"

"For certain I will," was the emphatic reply.

"I've been thinking," pursued Roy, thoughtfully, as he let his gaze wander from the book between them to the top of the dark pines swaying gently in the summer breeze; "that I may be quite strong enough when I grow up to be a discoverer. You see I can't be a soldier or sailor, but I haven't anything the matter with me but a weak chest, and doctors say sea voyages and travelling do weak chests good sometimes. Do you think I'm a very poor body to look at, Rob? That's what some of the villagers say I am, but my head and legs and arms are all right. I'm not a cripple or a hunchback, or blind, or deaf, or dumb, so I must be very glad of that. What do you think?"

"You're just as straight and plucky as Master Dudley, and you'll grow up a big, strong man, I dare say," said Hob, sympathetically.

"Old Principle says you may be a maker, a mender, or a breaker in your life. I want to be a maker. And I should like to find a country and make it into a nice big town. I want to do something big. I ask G.o.d every day to let me find something to do."

"Do you believe in--in G.o.d?" asked Rob, rather sheepishly.

"Of course I do; what do you mean? Don't you?"

"I don't know. I don't know much about Him, only you often talk as if you're--well quite friends with Him, and I've wondered at it."

Roy brought down his gaze from the hilltops to his companion's face with grave interest.

"I've known G.o.d since I was a baby," he said. "I don't remember when I didn't know Him. Nurse used to talk to me when I was very small, and when my father was dying he called me to him, and said,--'Fitz Roy!

Serve G.o.d first, then your Queen, and then your fellow men!' I've always remembered it, only you know we don't talk about these things, and I've only told Dudley. I'm trying to serve G.o.d--you don't want to be very strong to do that; but I'm longing to serve the Queen, and when Mr.

Selby talked to us of opportunities for doing good to all men I've been longing to find them ever since. Don't you know much about G.o.d, Rob?"

Rob shook his head. "I used to larn He made the world and me, and I know He'll punish the wicked, but I've never tried to serve Him, and--and I don't think as how I care about it."

"P'raps you don't know about Jesus Christ?" asked Roy, solemnly.

"Well, yes, I used to larn about Him when I was a kid at the Sunday-school. I know He came into the world to save people, but I never rightly understood why, nor what difference it makes."

"I'll be able to tell you that. If He hadn't died, I suppose I shouldn't have cared about serving G.o.d because it would have been no use--nothing would have been any use, for we should all have had to go to h.e.l.l when we died, to punish us for our sins. We could never have got to heaven at all."

"If we had been very good I reckon we could," put in Rob, knitting his brows with this aspect of the subject.

"But you see the Bible says we can't be good, not one of us--the devil won't let us."

"But there are good people in the world."

"You interrupt so," said Roy, a little impatiently. "I was going to tell you. Jesus died to let G.o.d be able to forgive us and take us to heaven. It's rather difficult to explain, but G.o.d punished Him _instead_ of us, do you see? So now we can all go to heaven, and the reason we try to be good is to please Jesus because He has loved us, and the reason we are able to be good is because Jesus helps us to be, and He can fight the devil better than we can. There, I think I've told you it right. Now shall we go on with the reading?"

Rob said no more till after the lesson was over, then he said slowly, "It's rather strange, that what you were a tellin' me, but I don't see it quite. P'raps another day you'll tell me again."

"If you make haste and read, I'll give you a Bible, and then you'll be able to read about it yourself. Of course you ought to be serving G.o.d just as much as anybody else, and you'd better begin at once!"

Saying which Roy scrambled down from his high perch and raced across the garden to the stables where he had settled to meet Dudley; whilst Rob descended more slowly, muttering to himself, "'Tis a good thing not to be afraid of G.o.d like Master Roy, but I doubt if I should ever get to serve Him!"

VII

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 att.i.tude 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 gra.s.s.

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.