As soon as he reached the top, he ran off with Dick in his arms to his cottage.
Mrs Kempson saw him coming. “What! another of them hurt?” she cried out: “God help us!”
“I don’t know,” said Kempson; “the child is very ill, if not dead already. Let us put him to bed and send for the doctor. It’s more than you or I can do to cure him of ourselves.”
Poor Dick was breathing, and twitching with his hands, but was quite unconscious. His black clothes were taken off him by his mother, who washed and put him to bed, while Samuel went to fetch the doctor attached to the mines. The doctor at once said that something had shaken his nerves, that he must be kept quiet, but well fed and amused. He had had a fright, that was it. Samuel knew the tricks that were played, and he guessed that some one had frightened Dick, and resolved to find out who it was, if he could. The best thing they could do for Dick just then, after he had taken the doctor’s stuff, was to send for David Adams to come and amuse him. David, who had just come up from the pit, very gladly came as soon as he had washed, and brought his most amusing books, and he sat and read by Dick’s bedside. This did Dick a great deal of good, and while he listened to David’s reading, he almost forgot his fright.
The next day, which was Sunday, he was a great deal better, and David came again to spend the day with him. Nobody went from the village to a place of worship, the nearest was some way off, the men were tired, and the women wanted to tidy their houses. The afternoon was very fine, and while the people were sitting at their doors, or standing about in groups in the dirty, unpaved street, a gentleman came among them with a small bundle of printed papers in his hand.
“Here comes a schoolmaster,” said one. “I wonder now what he wants with us.”
“May be to teach us something we don’t know,” observed a second.
“If he had come to tell us that our wages had risen, I’d have thanked him,” said a third, with a sneer.
“Maybe he is a parson of some sort,” said Joseph Kempson. “I, for one, should like to hear him, and so would the boys in there. There was a time when never a Sunday passed but what we went to the house of prayer. Now, from one end of the year to the other we are not seen inside one.” Joseph sighed, as he spoke.
The stranger had observed Kempson, and seeing something pleasant in his face, came up and addressed him, “Perhaps you will give me a chair,” he said; “I should like to sit down and read to those who may wish to hear me.”