A CRIPPLE

It was all over; two doctors had been closetted in the bedroom for a very long time, and then Dudley and Rob, sitting on the garden steps, were told that everything had been successfully carried out, and Roy was as well and better than had been expected.

"I never saw such fortitude and calm self-control in my life," said Miss Bertram to her mother; "it was unnatural for a child of his age!"

"He is a true Bertram in spirit," said the grandmother, proudly; then she added with a sigh, "but, alas, not in body."

"Nurse," said Dudley that night as he was creeping into bed under her charge; "is Roy going to die?"

"I hope not," answered nurse, a little tearfully. "Doctor Grant says he'll make a good recovery, but he whispered himself to me—Master Roy did just before he took the sleeping draught—'Nurse I'll have my leg buried with me!' he says."

Dudley was silent for a minute, then he asked, solemnly, "And where is it, nurse?"

Nurse turned upon him tearfully and angrily,

"I believe as how you haven't one speck of feeling for that blessed darling, you naughty boy! To talk of such a thing in such a way with not a tear on your face! And to think of him laying there a helpless cripple, and him the owner of the biggest estate in the county!"

Dudley crept into bed feeling he had no more tears to shed, wondering when he would be allowed to see Roy again, and also wondering who was the possessor of his lost leg.

It was a fortnight before he was allowed to see the little invalid, and when the boys met, Dudley gazed with deep pity on Roy's white little face, looking smaller and whiter than ever. But he welcomed him with a smile.

"It's years since you were here, old chap."

"Yes," responded Dudley, "and it's been the most miserablest years of my life."

"I thought I was going to die then," continued Roy, with still the same smile; "but God wouldn't let me. He was determined I should live, and do you know I've been thinking it out. I really believe it is because He is going to let me do something great still. And Doctor Grant has been telling me of a man in Parliament who took all the house by storm, and brought in a most wonderful law that thousands of people blessed him for, and he—he had a cork leg!"

Certainly Roy had not lost his buoyancy of spirits. Dudley drew a deep breath of relief, and for the first time began to see brighter times ahead.

"And I'm going to have a cork leg," went on Roy, "a leg that if I press a spring I can kick out. Think of that!"

Dudley looked beaming, exclaiming,—

"And it will be very convenient to have a leg with no feeling, won't it, especially about the knee when you're crawling along a wall with broken bottles."

"I'm going to see Rob to-morrow," announced Roy, after a little more conversation. "Has he learned to read while I have been ill?"

Dudley shook his head.

"No, we tried one afternoon on the wall, but we were too miserable, so we stopped."

"Well, I can teach him here in bed. That's one thing you don't want a leg to do!"

"I say, Roy," Dudley asked, very cautiously; "don't you feel very funny without it?"

Roy looked away for a minute without answering, and then he said slowly:

"I try and not think about it. It will be worse when I get up—people might think when they see me in bed that I'm all right, but they'll know the truth when I'm up."

Then he added more cheerfully, "It's awfully queer, but do you know I'd never know it wasn't there as far as the feeling goes. Why I can feel the pain right down to my toes now. And at night I'm always dreaming I'm running races with you as fast as I can, and then I wake and can't believe I'll never run again."

As Roy grew stronger he had more visitors; Rob came to him every day for a reading lesson, and old Principle brought him books and sweets. Ben was allowed an interview, and the old groom, with tears running down his cheeks, besought Roy to forgive him.

"I never ought to allowed you, and 'twas me that egged you on and sent you to your death!"

"No, it was my own fault, Ben," said Roy, humbly, "and the thing that pains me most—more than breaking my leg—is to think that I should be the first Bertram who has failed. Dudley did it, and I didn't, and of course I shall never be able to try it again. Perhaps I was too proud of what I could do. We have a picture in the nursery of a boy standing on the top of a bridge, and then tumbling in the water; it's called 'Pride must have a fall.' I've had a fall, haven't I, Ben?"

Ben came out from that interview declaring that "Master Roy ought to be sainted!"

One afternoon Rob was finishing his reading lesson when he looked up and said, a little shyly,

"Master Roy, you mind what you were a telling me of once—about what your father told you. Do you think as how I could do it too?"

"Of course you could, Rob. All of us ought to serve God."

"I've been thinking a deal about it, and I should like to, if I knew how."

"Well, the Bible tells you. I remember nurse made me learn a text a long time ago, 'If any man serve me let him follow me.' It's just following Jesus I suppose, and doing what He wants us to do."

"How can we follow somebody we can't see?"

Roy knitted his brows. Rob's questions were hard to answer sometimes, and then a smile flashed across his face.

"I'll tell you. It's like this. On my birthday granny called me in to give me a birthday talk and, of course, she talked to me about my property. She said my uncle had managed it awfully well over there, and she hoped I would walk in his steps. That would be following him though he was dead, wouldn't it?"

"Ye-es," was the slow response.

"And so you see," Roy replied, leaning forward impressively, and his eyes glistening with earnestness, "we can each follow Jesus. Try and live as He did, and do and speak like Him. We read how He lived in the New Testament."

"And He was the one that died for us," Rob said, reflectively.

"Yes, He is the one you go to, to get your sins washed away. That comes first before we begin to serve Him."

"But I never could serve Him proper, always," objected Rob.

"No, nor more can any one. I'm awful, you know! Dudley says I think such a lot of myself. And of course Jesus never did. And I grumble and cry over my leg every day, and of course He wouldn't have done it. But Jesus forgives us again and again, and helps us to be good, and that's why we love Him, and because He died for us."

"Would He forgive me, and help me?" asked Rob; "are you quite sure He would care to have me for a servant?"

"Of course I'm sure. He wants everybody. You just ask Him."

Rob said no more. He was a lad of few words, and for some days did not touch on the subject again. His reading was progressing rapidly, and when Roy and Dudley found out that his birthday was near they laid their heads together and presented him with a handsome Bible, as they knew he was saving up his pennies to buy one.

His gratitude and delight overwhelmed them, and every day now, when his work was finished, he would sit down and spell out chapters of the gospels to himself.

As the days began to shorten, Roy grew so much stronger that he was able to be carried downstairs, and the first evening he was in the drawing-room, he asked Miss Bertram for the song of the two little drummer boys.

She sat down at the piano, and Dudley seeing Rob weeding a flower bed outside the open window, beckoned to him to come up closer and listen.

"It's the best song out," he shouted.

Roy's face shone as Miss Bertram's sweet voice rang out triumphantly.

—"'the fight was won, and the regiment saved
By those two little dots in red!'"

"Oh, how I wish I could be a soldier!" was the muttered exclamation of Roy, "I shall never be able to serve the Queen now!"

"Nonsense," said Miss Bertram, briskly; "granny would tell you 'that all the Bertrams have always served the Queen, and only a few of them have been soldiers!'"

"Well, I suppose they have been sailors?" said Dudley.

"Not at all; we have only had one admiral, and three naval captains in our family during the last hundred years. Your father, Dudley, served the Queen as a governor in India quite as well as if he were fighting for her. Roy's father was her servant in Canada, though he had to do with politics; your uncle James served as a member of Parliament. The Queen has numbers of servants. I always think policemen are quite as brave as soldiers!"

"And what can a one-legged Bertram do?" Roy asked, with a pathetic smile that went straight to his aunt's heart.

"There's no reason why he shouldn't go into Parliament, and perhaps end by being a member of the cabinet."

"I never quite understand what that is," said Roy, contemplatively. "I don't think I should like to be shut up in a stuffy cupboard. They shut them up in it to talk, don't they, Aunt Judy?"

How Miss Bertram laughed! But whilst she was explaining what a cabinet was, Rob crept away from the window muttering, "I suppose as how I could be a policeman, but I'd a deal rather be a soldier!"

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