Surely--this was the thought with which I returned to health--we boys,
sent up to rough it in London, are not, after all, mere slung stones.
There _is_ One who cares for us, some One who comes after us when we go
astray, some One who saves us when we are at the point of falling, if we
will but cry, in true penitence, to Him!
I had had many and grievous lessons before I had found it out; but now I
had, life seemed a new thing to me!
As my convalescence advanced and my bodily strength returned, my spirits
rose within me, and I felt eager to be back at my post at Hawk Street.
However, I had to exercise some patience yet. Meanwhile, with Billy
(and occasionally Mr Smith), as my companion by day, and Jack by night,
the time could hardly hang heavily.
"Well, Billy," I said one morning when the doctor had been and told me
that next week I might be allowed to sit up for an hour or so a day, "I
shall soon be rid of this bed. I don't know what would have become of
me if it hadn't been for you and Jack Smith."
"Ga on," said Billy, who, with his tongue in one cheek and his face
twisting into all sorts of contortions, was sitting writing an exercise
in a copy-book, "you don't know what you're torkin' about."
"Oh yes, I do, though," I replied, understanding that this was Billy's
modest way of disclaiming any merit.
"More'n you didn't when you was 'avin' the fever!" observed the boy.
"What?" I inquired. "Was I talking much when I was ill?"
"You was so," said Billy, "a-joring and a-joring and a-joring same as
you never heard a bloke."
"What was I saying?" I asked, feeling a little uneasy as to what I
might have said in my delirium.
"You was a swearin' tremenjus," said the boy.
"Was I?" Alas! Jack would have heard it all.
"Yes, and you was a-torkin' about your Crowses, and Wollopses, and
Doubledaisies, and sich like. And you was a-tellin' that there
'Orksbury (which I'd like to do for, the animal, so I would), as you was
a convex son, and he wasn't to tell no one for fear Mashing should 'ear
of it. And you was a-crying out for your friend Smith to shine your
boots, and tellin' him you wouldn't do it never no more. And you was a-
singin' out that there was a little gal a-bein' run away with on a pony,
and you must go and stop 'im. You was a-jawin', rather."
I could hardly help laughing at his description, though its details
reminded me sadly of my old follies and their consequences.
The most extraordinary raving of all, however, was that which referred
to my stopping the little girl's runaway pony at Packworth years ago--an
incident I don't believe I had ever once thought of since.
It was curious, too, that, now it was called to memory, I thought of the
adventure a good deal, and wished I knew what had become of the owner of
that restive little pony. I determined to tell Jack about it when he
came home.
"What do you think, Jack?" I said, as he was tucking me up for the
night. "Billy has been telling me what I was talking about in my fever,
and says one thing I discoursed about was a little girl who was being
run away with by a pony."
"Yes," said Jack, laughing; "I heard that. It was quite a new light for
you, old man, to be dreaming of that sort of romantic thing."
"But it really happened once," I said.
"No! where? I thought the Henniker and Mrs Nash were the only lady
friends you ever had? Where was it?"
"At Packworth, of all places," I said. "It was that day I went over to
try and find you out--just before we came up to London, you know. I was
walking back to Brownstroke, and met the pony bolting down the road."
Jack seemed suddenly very much interested. "What sort of little girl
was it?" he asked.
"I can't exactly tell you. She was so frightened I had hardly time to
look at her. But--"
"What sort of pony?" asked Jack.
"A grey one--and a jolly little animal, too!" I said. "But why do you
ask?"
"Only," said Jack, with a peculiar smile, "because it strikes me very
forcibly the young person in question was my sister, that's all!"
"What!" I exclaimed, in amazement, "your sister!--the little girl of
the photograph! Oh, Jack, how extraordinary!"
"It is queer," said Jack; "but it's a fact all the same. I heard about
it when I was last home. The pony took fright, so they told me, and--
wasn't there a nurse with her?"
"Yes, there was."
"Yes; that was Mrs Shield. The pony took fright as she was walking
beside it, and Mary would have come to grief to a dead certainty, so
they both say, if a young gentleman hadn't rushed up and stopped it.
Why, Fred, old man," said he, taking my hand, "I little thought I owed
you all that!"