said Dudley, staring at Roy with a peculiar
gravity; "if you hadn't dashed over to me, I should have been sucked
down by that old wheel, and should have been a dead man by this time.
You've done to-day what you were longing to do."

"Yes, but I tell you I felt awfully squeamish when I saw you in the
water and thought I might be too late."

As they neared the house, Roy's pace slackened.

"Go on, Dudley, and leave me, I can't get on, I believe that horrid old
asthma is coming on, I'll follow slowly."

"I'm not quite such a cad," was Dudley's retort, and then hoisting Roy
up on his back, as if that mode of proceeding was quite a usual
occurrence, he made his way into the house.

They crept up to their bedrooms and changed their wet clothes before
they showed themselves to any one. Then Dudley waxed eloquent for the
occasion, and the story was told in drawing-room and servants' hall,
till every one was loud in their praises of the little rescuer.

"He looks too small to have done it," said Miss Bertram, smiling; for
though Roy was Dudley's senior by two months, he was a good head
shorter.

Roy got rather impatient under this adulation.

"Oh, shut up, Dudley, don't be such an ass, as if I could have done
anything else!"

An hour after, and Roy was sitting up in bed speechless and panting,
with the bronchitis kettle in full play, and nurse trying vainly to
battle with one of his worst bronchial attacks.

"I say "--he gasped at last; "do you think--I'm going to die--this
time?"

"Surely no, my pet. It's more asthma than bronchitis; I'll pull you
round, please God."

Midnight came, and when nurse left the room for a minute she found a
small figure crouched down outside the door.

It was Dudley.

"Oh, nurse, he's very bad, isn't he? Is he going to die? What shall I
do! I shall be his murderer, I've killed him!"

Dudley's eyes were wild with terror, and nurse tried to soothe him.

"Don't talk nonsense, but go to bed; he'll be better in the morning, I
hope. It's just the wet, and the strain of it that's done it. There's
none to blame. You couldn't help it, and he's been as bad as this
before and pulled through. Go to bed, laddie, and ask God to make him
better."

Dudley crept back to bed, and flung himself down on his pillows with a
fit of bitter weeping.

"She says I couldn't help it; oh, God, make him better, make him better,
do forgive me! I never thought of this!"

III

MAKING AN OPPORTUNIT