Windyridge

by W. Riley

I have been having quite an exciting time lately. If you have never lived in a small hamlet of a hundred souls or thereabouts, with smaller tributary hamlets dropped down in the funniest and most unlikely places within easy walking distance, you do not know how very full of excitement life can be. Why, when I was living at No. 8 nobody displayed very much emotion when the jeweller at the end of the street suffered "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" as the result of the undesired patronage of connoisseurs in diamonds; and even when we learned that the poor man had been found gagged and bound to his office chair and more dead than alive, the languid interest of the company was sufficiently expressed in the "Hard luck!" of the gentlemen, and the "What a shame!" of the ladies.

"That's the fire-engine," someone would remark, as the horses dashed past to the clang of the warning bell; but we sent up our plates for a second helping of boiled mutton with never a thought as to the destination and fate of the brave fellows who might be about to risk their lives in a grim struggle with flame and smoke.

Murders and assassinations and suicides were discussed, if they had been conducted respectably, with the same air of commiseration as was employed when a fellow-boarder complained of headache; if they were not respectable we did not discuss them at all. It took a first-class society scandal to really stir us, and then we gathered in groups and became thoroughly interested—the women, I mean, of course. The men were just as interested but not so ready to admit it, and professed to be debating politics. I sometimes wonder if what the Psalmist said in his haste might not have been affirmed more leisurely. However, that is nothing to the point; ordinarily, there is no denying the fact that we were bored, or perhaps I ought to adopt the modern expression and say "blasé."

Here in Windyridge that word and its significance are unknown.

When old Mrs. Smithies' sow had a litter of seventeen pigs we all threw down our work and went across to congratulate her, and stopped each other in the street to discuss the momentous event, and to speculate on the difference it would make in that worthy lady's fortunes.

On the other hand, when old Woodman's dog, Cæsar, was reported to have gone mad, we were wildly excited for the space of one whole day, and spent our time in telling each other what dreadful things might have happened if he had not been securely chained up from the moment the symptoms became ominous; and recalling lurid and highly-imaginative stories of men who, as the result of dog-bites, had foamed at the mouth, and had to be roped down to their beds. Which reminded someone else of the bull that old Green used to have, away yonder past Uncle Ned's, which went mad one Whitsuntide, and tore along the road three good miles to Windyridge, roaring furiously, and scattering the school children, who were assembled for the treat, in all directions; and badly goring this very dog Cæsar, who had pluckily charged him.

This week's excitements began on Monday, when young Smiddles, who had been "gas-acting," according to his mother, ran his fist through the window-pane, and cut his arm very badly and even dangerously. Smiddles' roaring must have rivalled that of old Green's bull, and, supplemented by his mother's screams, it served to rouse the whole village.

Smiddles' sister, a buxom young woman of plain appearance but sound sense, threatened to box the sufferer's ears if he did not "stop that din," and though much alarmed at the flow of blood, made some efforts to staunch it with her apron.

I had already gained an ill-deserved reputation for surgery, principally on account of the possession of a medicine chest and an "Ambulance" certificate, and my services were speedily requisitioned by the fleet-footed son of the next door neighbour, who bade me come at once, as "Smiddles' lad" was "bleeding to death on t' hearthstone."

After I had prevented the realisation of this fatality by means of a tight bandage, and made the patient as comfortable as a sling permits, I despatched the mercuric youth to summon Dr. Trempest, as I was afraid some stitches would be necessary, and went out to find the street buzzing with excitement, and my humble self regarded as only slightly less than super-human.