IN MEMORY OF FARMER BLUFF.
A FEW hours later, Bill had made acquaintance with one of the narrow beds in the accident ward of the Riverbridge Infirmary, where—after going through the exhausting process of having his clothes removed, and his leg put in splints—he fell asleep and dreamt all sorts of extraordinary things. Amongst others, that the Squire had caught him stealing eggs in the hay, and had him nailed out on a flat board—like the stoats on the lower boarding of the barn; and that when he tried to get away, Farmer Bluff's dog came and barked at him. Then the dog suddenly changed into a woman with a snow-cloud on her head, who clapped ice on his forehead, to make him forget for a little while. This imaginary ice being none other than the hand of the kind-hearted night nurse, under the touch of whose cool palm Bill from time to time forgot his feverish struggles to toss about. And so the morning dawned; the first of forty days, or more, that the Bill would have to spend upon that narrow bed.
In the meantime, Dick, arrayed in Bill's Sunday suit, and escorted by the Squire, had gone off up the hill, leaving his half-dry clothes in Mrs. Mumby's charge.
Arrived at home, he was at once put to bed between blankets, and made to swallow a large basinful of hot gruel, which would have been unpalatable enough, had he not been so long fasting that anything of the nature of food was welcome.
Between the gruel and the blankets, he was soon perspiring violently, and in a sound sleep, from which he did not rouse until long after Bill—in accordance with the early rule of the Infirmary—had breakfasted. Then, feeling very much dispirited and out of sorts, and looking a wretched object, with his bruised and battered face and fists, he dressed and came downstairs, more thankful than words can describe, to find his father already gone, and as grateful for the message he had left behind, excusing him from school for the day, on condition that he did not stir outside the house.
Dick, as may readily be imagined, willingly accepted the condition, and remained at home, answering his mother's numerous questions, and enduring her reproaches as stoically as he could; and looking forward with great misgivings to the lecture which, he knew only too well, he could not hope to escape, on his father's return from business.
Next morning, he went back to school as usual, and after several days of quizzing and jeering on the part of his schoolmates, things fell back into their ordinary course. By degrees the cuts and bruises disappeared; and but for two things Dick might perhaps have soon succeeded in forgetting the whole occurrence—at any rate until Bill's discharge from the Infirmary brought him home, with one leg a full inch shorter than the other, to limp for life—a perpetual reminder of the whole disgraceful affair.
Meanwhile, Dick had been forced to abide by the harsh, though just words with which his father had concluded his lecture that evening.
"You pride yourself on common sense," said Mr. Crozier, "and have on more than one occasion rebelled against seeing by the light of my maturer wisdom. Common sense should have taught you that no person, young or old, can violate the laws of God, but they are sure to reap due punishment. Bill has learnt the wholesome truth in a manner that I hope he will not easily forget. It will be my duty to make sure that you remember too. I had intended taking you on the river this coming Bank Holiday, to give you your first lesson in rowing. But since you have so persistently and dishonourably disregarded my injunctions with regard to it, I shall put off doing so another year, or until I find that you have learnt obedience."
As time went on, Dick found this decision of his father's harder than he had even thought; for several of his schoolmates had boats upon the river, and every invitation to their water-parties had to be refused.