"Why does God do it!" he sobbed at length, "Roy is so much better than I am, he's always trying to please God, though he never talks about it, and I've prayed so hard that he might be made quite well!"
"Ay, and the good Lord is making him well perhaps though not by the way you planned. He might a been killed outright, and then what a trouble you'd have been in."
"This is nearly as bad," muttered Dudley.
"Now, laddie, don't harden your heart, are you one of the Lord's own children?"
"I don't know. I don't think I love God as much as Roy does."
"'Tis an awful bad principle," the old man continued, "to doubt and complain directly we can't understand the Almighty's dealings with us. He loves Master Roy better'n you and me, and the time will come when we'll thank the Lord with all our hearts for this accident."
This was utterly incomprehensible to Dudley.
"I feel very badly about it," old Principle went on, "and so do you, but the one I'm most sorry for is Ben Burkstone. I hear say he's fit to kill himself with despair!"
"Well," said Dudley, stopping his sobs for a minute; "I don't see it was his fault; it was the stupid pony; he funked it, and then fell and broke his knees; mine went over all right. Oh, why didn't it happen to me! If I had been spilled, I wouldn't have minded, and one leg wouldn't have been half so bad to me as to Roy!"
"I reckon you'd have got your leg all right again without having to lose it. 'Tis the laddie's delicate constitution that is so in his way. But I think you'll find Master Roy as plucky over the loss of his leg as he ever was. Now lift your heart up to God and ask Him that he may overrule it all for good. There goes the shop-bell!"