"You have been away a time," he said, wearily: "I'm sure I'm well enough to go out now. I can't bear the winter. It means so many colds and aches."
"Well, you're going to get better very soon, and look here, old chap! If you try your very best, perhaps the old doctor will give you leave to come to school with me after Easter."
Roy's eyes sparkled at the thought.
"Nurse always makes such a molly-coddle of me, and so does granny; but I'll try as hard as I can to be better."
"And now just look at these! Old Principle says these show that the sea must have washed up amongst the hills and into his cave hundreds of years ago, for these belong to salt water fish not river ones. Look at them! 'Fossils' he calls them, they're shells made out of stone. He told me I might give you these from him. I thought he would never go back to his cave again after last December, but he says he feels so much stronger now; and he is very careful how he digs; he won't let me come near him while he does it. And he told me he has been busy writing a paper which he is going to send to some society in London—I forget its name. He is what you call a discoverer, isn't he?"
Roy nodded, then asked anxiously:
"Dudley, were you rude to granny before you went out? Aunt Judy came to look for you here, and she said she hoped you were going to beg granny's pardon for something."
"I'll go now, I had almost forgotten."
And Dudley trotted off to his grandmother's room. She received him sternly, but he was so abjectly penitent that she soon forgave him, and he returned to Roy with a relieved mind.
"It's a dreadful thing to have a temper," he remarked, as he sat upon the nursery table swinging his legs to and fro; "I've given granny an awful headache by the way I banged her door."