Produced by Suzanne Shell, Emmy and the Online Distributed
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[Illustration: "EDRED OBEYED, AND THE MOULDIESTWARP LEANED TOWARDS HIM
AND SPOKE IN HIS EAR"
_Frontispiece._] [_Page 260_]
HARDING'S LUCK
_By_
E. NESBIT
Author of
"The Wouldbegoods," "The Treasure Seekers," Etc.
[Illustration]
WITH SIXTEEN FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
BY H. R. MILLAR
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1910, by
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
Copyright, 1909, by
E. NESBIT BLAND
_All rights reserved_
_September, 1910_
TO
ROSAMUND PHILIPPA PHILIPS
WITH
E. NESBIT'S LOVE
Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
I. TINKLER AND THE MOONFLOWER 1
II. BURGLARS 31
III. THE ESCAPE 58
IV. WHICH WAS THE DREAM? 82
V. "TO GET YOUR OWN LIVING" 115
VI. BURIED TREASURE 144
VII. DICKIE LEARNS MANY THINGS 178
VIII. GOING HOME 208
IX. KIDNAPPED 228
X. THE NOBLE DEED 250
XI. LORD ARDEN 275
XII. THE END 300
Illustrations
"EDRED OBEYED, AND THE MOULDIESTWARP LEANED TOWARDS HIM AND
SPOKE IN HIS EAR" _Frontispiece_
FACING
PAGE
"'GIMME,' SAID DICKIE--'GIMME A PENN'ORTH O' THAT THERE'" 6
"'IT _IS_ A MOONFLOWER, OF COURSE,' HE SAID" 12
"'HERE, HUMPHREYS, PUT THESE IN A JUG OF WATER TILL I GO
HOME'" 16
"HE LAY FACE DOWNWARD ON THE ROAD AND TURNED UP HIS BOOT" 24
"'IT ONLY PAWNS FOR A SHILLIN',' SAID DICKIE" 38
"THREE OR FOUR FACES LOOKED DOWN AT DICKIE" 70
"HE MADE, WITH TRIPLE LINES OF SILVERY SEEDS, A SIX-POINTED
STAR" 80
"''TIS THE PICTURE,' HE SAID PROUDLY, 'OF MY OLD SHIP, "THE
GOLDEN VENTURE"'" 98
"THE GALLEY WAS DECKED WITH FRESH FLOWERS" 102
"'AN' I OFF'S WITH ME COAT, AND FLOPS IT DOWN IN THE MIDDLE
OF THE PUDDLE, RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE GAL'" 134
"'OH, WHAT A LONG TIME SINCE I HAVE SEEN THEE!' DICKIE CRIED" 148
"IT HURT, BUT DICKIE LIKED IT" 158
"'ELFRIDA!' SAID BOTH BOYS AT ONCE" 272
"'I HAVE KILLED A MAN,' HE SAID" 290
"'I'VE THOUGHT OF NOTHING ELSE FOR A MONTH,' SAID DICKIE" 304
HARDING'S LUCK
Harding's Luck
CHAPTER I
TINKLER AND THE MOONFLOWER
DICKIE lived at New Cross. At least the address was New Cross, but
really the house where he lived was one of a row of horrid little houses
built on the slope where once green fields ran down the hill to the
river, and the old houses of the Deptford merchants stood stately in
their pleasant gardens and fruitful orchards. All those good fields and
happy gardens are built over now. It is as though some wicked giant had
taken a big brush full of yellow ochre paint, and another full of mud
color, and had painted out the green in streaks of dull yellow and
filthy brown; and the brown is the roads and the yellow is the houses.
Miles and miles and miles of them, and not a green thing to be seen
except the cabbages in the greengrocers' shops, and here and there some
poor trails of creeping-jenny drooping from a dirty window-sill. There
is a little yard at the back of each house; this is called "the garden,"
and some of these show green--but they only show it to the houses' back
windows. You cannot see it from the street. These gardens are green,
because green is the color that most pleases and soothes men's eyes; and
however you may shut people up between bars of yellow and mud color, and
however hard you may make them work, and however little wage you may pay
them for working, there will always be found among those people some men
who are willing to work a little longer, and for no wages at all, so
that they may have green things growing near them.
But there were no green things growing in the garden at the back of the
house where Dickie lived with his aunt. There were stones and bones, and
bits of brick, and dirty old dish-cloths matted together with grease and
mud, worn-out broom-heads and broken shovels, a bottomless pail, and the
mouldy remains of a hutch where once rabbits had lived. But that was a
very long time ago, and Dickie had never seen the rabbits. A boy had
brought a brown rabbit to school once, buttoned up inside his jacket,
and he had let Dickie hold it in his hands for several minutes before
the teacher detected its presence and shut it up in a locker till school
should be over. So Dickie knew what rabbits were like. And he was fond
of the hutch for the sake of what had once lived there.
And when his aunt sold the poor remains of the hutch to a man with a
barrow who was ready to buy anything, and who took also the pails and
the shovels, giving threepence for the lot, Dickie was almost as unhappy
as though the hutch had really held a furry friend. And he hated the man
who took the hutch away, all the more because there were empty
rabbit-skins hanging sadly from the back of the barrow.
It is really with the going of that rabbit-hutch that this story begins.
Because it was then that Dickie, having called his aunt a Beast, and hit
at her with his little dirty fist, was well slapped and put out into the
bereaved yard to "come to himself," as his aunt said. He threw himself
down on the ground and cried and wriggled with misery and pain, and
wished--ah, many things.
"Wot's the bloomin' row now?" the Man Next Door suddenly asked; "been
hittin' of you?"
"They've took away the 'utch," said Dickie.
"Well, there warn't nothin' in it."
"I diden want it took away," wailed Dickie.
"Leaves more room," said the Man Next Door, leaning on his spade. It was
Saturday afternoon and the next-door garden was one of the green ones.
There were small grubby daffodils in it, and dirty-faced little
primroses, and an arbor beside the water-butt, bare at this time of the
year, but still a real arbor. And an elder-tree that in the hot weather
had flat, white flowers on it big as tea-plates. And a lilac-tree with
brown buds on it. Beautiful. "Say, matey, just you chuck it! Chuck it, I
say! How in thunder can I get on with my digging with you 'owlin' yer
'ead off?" inquired the Man Next Door. "You get up and peg along in an'
arst your aunt if she'd be agreeable for me to do up her garden a bit. I
could do it odd times. You'd like that."
"Not 'arf!" said Dickie, getting up.
"Come to yourself, eh?" sneered the aunt. "You mind, and let it be the
last time you come your games with me, my beauty. You and your
tantrums!"
Dickie said what it was necessary to say, and got back to the "garden."
"She says she ain't got no time to waste, an' if you 'ave she don't care
what you does with it."
"There's a dirty mug you've got on you," said the Man Next Door, leaning
over to give Dickie's face a rub with a handkerchief hardly cleaner.
"Now I'll come over and make a start." He threw his leg over the fence.
"You just peg about an' be busy pickin' up all them fancy articles, and
nex' time your aunt goes to Buckingham Palace for the day we'll have a
bonfire."
"Fifth o' November?" said Dickie, sitting down and beginning to draw to
himself the rubbish that covered the ground.
"Fifth of anything you like, so long as _she_ ain't about," said he,
driving in the spade. "'Ard as any old door-step it is. Never mind,
we'll turn it over, and we'll get some little seedses and some little
plantses and we shan't know ourselves."
"I got a 'apenny," said Dickie.
"Well, I'll put one to it, and you leg 'long and buy seedses. That's wot
you do."
Dickie went. He went slowly, because he was lame. And he was lame
because his "aunt" had dropped him when he was a baby. She was not a
nice woman, and I am glad to say that she goes out of this story almost
at once. But she did keep Dickie when his father died, and she might
have sent him to the work-house. For she was not really his aunt, but
just the woman of the house where his father had lodged. It was good of
her to keep Dickie, even if she wasn't very kind to him. And as that is
all the good I can find to say about her, I will say no more. With his
little crutch, made out of a worn-out broom cut down to his little
height, he could manage quite well in spite of his lameness.
[Illustration: "'GIMME,' SAID DICKIE--'GIMME A PENN'ORTH O' THAT
THERE.'"]
He found the corn-chandler's--a really charming shop that smelled like
stables and had deep dusty bins where he would have liked to play. Above
the bins were delightful little square-fronted drawers, labelled Rape,
Hemp, Canary, Millet, Mustard, and so on; and above the drawers pictures
of the kind of animals that were fed on the kind of things that the shop
sold. Fat, oblong cows that had eaten Burley's Cattle Food, stout
pillows of wool that Ovis's Sheep Spice had fed, and, brightest and best
of all, an incredibly smooth-plumaged parrot, rainbow-colored, cocking a
black eye bright with the intoxicating qualities of Perrokett's Artistic
Bird Seed.
"Gimme," said Dickie, leaning against the counter and pointing a grimy
thumb at the wonder--"gimme a penn'orth o' that there!"
"Got the penny?" the shopman asked carefully.
Dickie displayed it, parted with it, and came home nursing a paper bag
full of rustling promises.
"Why," said the Man Next Door, "that ain't seeds. It's parrot food, that
is."
"It said the Ar-something Bird Seed," said Dickie, downcast; "I thought
it 'ud come into flowers like birds--same colors as wot the poll parrot
was, dontcherknow?"
"And so it will like as not," said the Man Next Door comfortably. "I'll
set it along this end soon's I've got it turned over. I lay it'll come
up something pretty."
So the seed was sown. And the Man Next Door promised two more pennies
later for _real_ seed. Also he transplanted two of the primroses whose
faces wanted washing.
It was a grand day for Dickie. He told the whole story of it that night
when he went to bed to his only confidant, from whom he hid nothing. The
confidant made no reply, but Dickie was sure this was not because the
confidant didn't care about the story. The confidant was a blackened
stick about five inches long, with little blackened bells to it like the
bells on dogs' collars. Also a rather crooked bit of something whitish
and very hard, good to suck, or to stroke with your fingers, or to dig
holes in the soap with. Dickie had no idea what it was. His father had
given it to him in the hospital where Dickie was taken to say good-bye
to him. Good-bye had to be said because of father having fallen off the
scaffolding where he was at work and not getting better. "You stick to
that," father had said, looking dreadfully clean in the strange bed
among all those other clean beds; "it's yourn, your very own. My dad
give it to me, and it belonged to his dad. Don't you let any one take
it away. Some old lady told the old man it 'ud bring us luck. So long,
old chap."
Dickie remembered every word of that speech, and he kept the treasure.
There had been another thing with it, tied on with string. But Aunt Maud
had found that, and taken it away "to take care of," and he had never
seen it again. It was brassy, with a white stone and some sort of
pattern on it. He had the treasure, and he had not the least idea what
it was, with its bells that jangled such pretty music, and its white
spike so hard and smooth. He did not know--but I know. It was a
rattle--a baby's old-fashioned rattle--or, if you would rather call it
that, a "coral and bells."
"And we shall 'ave the fairest flowers of hill and dale," said Dickie,
whispering comfortably in his dirty sheets, "and greensward. Oh! Tinkler
dear, 'twill indeed be a fair scene. The gayest colors of the rainbow
amid the Ague Able green of fresh leaves. I do love the Man Next Door.
He has indeed a 'art of gold."
That was how Dickie talked to his friend Tinkler. You know how he talked
to his aunt and the Man Next Door. I wonder whether you know that most
children can speak at least two languages, even if they have never had a
foreign nurse or been to foreign climes--or whether you think that you
are the only child who can do this.
Believe me, you are not. Parents and guardians would be surprised to
learn that dear little Charlie has a language quite different from the
one he uses to them--a language in which he talks to the cook and the
housemaid. And yet another language--spoken with the real accent too--in
which he converses with the boot-boy and the grooms.
Dickie, however, had learned his second language from books. The teacher
at his school had given him six--"Children of the New Forest," "Quentin
Durward," "Hereward the Wake," and three others--all paper-backed. They
made a new world for Dickie. And since the people in books talked in
this nice, if odd, way, he saw no reason why he should not--to a friend
whom he could trust.
I hope you're not getting bored with all this.
You see, I must tell you a little about the kind of boy Dickie was and
the kind of way he lived, or you won't understand his adventures. And he
had adventures--no end of adventures--as you will see presently.
Dickie woke, gay as the spring sun that was trying to look in at him
through his grimy windows.
"Perhaps he'll do some more to the garden to-day!" he said, and got up
very quickly.
He got up in the dirty, comfortless room and dressed himself. But in
the evening he was undressed by kind, clean hands, and washed in a big
bath half-full of hot, silvery water, with soap that smelled like the
timber-yard at the end of the street. Because, going along to school,
with his silly little head full of Artistic Bird Seeds and flowers
rainbow-colored, he had let his crutch slip on a banana-skin and had
tumbled down, and a butcher's cart had gone over his poor lame foot. So
they took the hurt foot to the hospital, and of course he had to go with
it, and the hospital was much more like the heaven he read of in his
books than anything he had ever come across before.
He noticed that the nurses and the doctors spoke in the kind of words
that he had found in his books, and in a voice that he had not found
anywhere; so when on the second day a round-faced, smiling lady in a
white cap said, "Well, Tommy, and how are we to-day?" he replied--
"My name is far from being Tommy, and I am in Lux Ury and Af Fluence, I
thank you, gracious lady."
At which the lady laughed and pinched his cheek.
When she grew to know him better, and found out where he had learned to
talk like that, she produced more books. And from them he learned more
new words. They were very nice to him at the hospital, but when they
sent him home they put his lame foot into a thick boot with a horrid,
clumpy sole and iron things that went up his leg.
His aunt and her friends said, "How kind!" but Dickie hated it. The boys
at school made game of it--they had got used to the crutch--and that was
worse than being called "Old Dot-and-go-one," which was what Dickie had
got used to--so used that it seemed almost like a pet name.
And on that first night of his return he found that he had been robbed.
They had taken his Tinkler from the safe corner in his bed where the
ticking was broken, and there was a soft flock nest for a boy's best
friend.
He knew better than to ask what had become of it. Instead he searched
and searched the house in all its five rooms. But he never found
Tinkler.
Instead he found next day, when his aunt had gone out shopping, a little
square of cardboard at the back of the dresser drawer, among the dirty
dusters and clothes pegs and string and corks and novelettes.
It was a pawn-ticket--"Rattle. One shilling."
Dickie knew all about pawn-tickets. You, of course, don't. Well, ask
some grown-up person to explain; I haven't time. I want to get on with
the story.
[Illustration: "'IT _IS_ A MOONFLOWER, OF COURSE,' HE SAID"
[_Page 13_]
Until he had found that ticket he had not been able to think of anything
else. He had not even cared to think about his garden and wonder whether
the Artistic Bird Seeds had come up parrot-colored. He had been a very
long time in the hospital, and it was August now. And the nurses had
assured him that the seeds must be up long ago--he would find everything
flowering, you see if he didn't.
And now he went out to look. There was a tangle of green growth at the
end of the garden, and the next garden was full of weeds. For the Man
Next Door had gone off to look for work down Ashford way, where the
hop-gardens are, and the house was to let.
A few poor little pink and yellow flowers showed stunted among the green
where he had sowed the Artistic Bird Seed. And, towering high above
everything else--oh, three times as high as Dickie himself--there was a
flower--a great flower like a sunflower, only white.
"Why," said Dickie, "it's as big as a dinner-plate."
It was.
It stood up, beautiful and stately, and turned its cream-white face
towards the sun.
"The stalk's like a little tree," said Dickie; and so it was.
It had great drooping leaves, and a dozen smaller white flowers stood
out below it on long stalks, thinner than that needed to support the
moonflower itself.
"It _is_ a moonflower, of course," he said, "if the other kind's
sunflowers. I love it! I love it! I love it!"
He did not allow himself much time for loving it, however; for he had
business in hand. He had, somehow or other, to get a shilling. Because
without a shilling he could not exchange that square of cardboard with
"Rattle" on it for his one friend, Tinkler. And with the shilling he
could. (This is part of the dismal magic of pawn-tickets which some
grown-up will kindly explain to you.)
"I can't get money by the sweat of my brow," said Dickie to himself;
"nobody would let me run their errands when they could get a boy with
both legs to do them. Not likely. I wish I'd got something I could
sell."
He looked round the yard--dirtier and nastier than ever now in the parts
that the Man Next Door had not had time to dig. There was certainly
nothing there that any one would want to buy, especially now the
rabbit-hutch was gone. Except ... why, of course--the moonflowers!
He got the old worn-down knife out of the bowl on the back kitchen sink,
where it nestled among potato peelings like a flower among foliage, and
carefully cut half a dozen of the smaller flowers. Then he limped up to
New Cross Station, and stood outside, leaning on his crutch, and holding
out the flowers to the people who came crowding out of the station after
the arrival of each train--thick, black crowds of tired people, in too
great a hurry to get home to their teas to care much about him or his
flowers. Everybody glanced at them, for they were wonderful flowers, as
white as water-lilies, only flat--the real sunflower shape--and their
centres were of the purest yellow gold color.
"Pretty, ain't they?" one black-coated person would say to another. And
the other would reply--
"No. Yes. I dunno! Hurry up, can't you?"
It was no good. Dickie was tired, and the flowers were beginning to
droop. He turned to go home, when a sudden thought brought the blood to
his face. He turned again quickly and went straight to the pawnbroker's.
You may be quite sure he had learned the address on the card by heart.
He went boldly into the shop, which had three handsome gold balls
hanging out above its door, and in its window all sorts of pretty
things--rings, and chains, and brooches, and watches, and china, and
silk handkerchiefs, and concertinas.
"Well, young man," said the stout gentleman behind the counter, "what
can we do for you?"
"I want to pawn my moonflowers," said Dickie.
The stout gentleman roared with laughter, and slapped a stout leg with a
stout hand.
"Well, that's a good 'un!" he said, "as good a one as ever I heard. Why,
you little duffer, they'd be dead long before you came back to redeem
them, that's certain."
"You'd have them while they were alive, you know," said Dickie gently.
"What are they? Don't seem up to much. Though I don't know that I ever
saw a flower just like them, come to think of it," said the pawnbroker,
who lived in a neat villa at Brockley and went in for gardening in a
gentlemanly, you-needn't-suppose-I-can't-afford-a-real-gardener-if-I-like
sort of way.
"They're moonflowers," said Dickie, "and I want to pawn them and then
get something else out with the money."
"Got the ticket?" said the gentleman, cleverly seeing that he meant "get
out of pawn."
"Yes," said Dickie; "and it's my own Tinkler that my daddy gave me
before he died, and my aunt Missa propagated it when I was in hospital."
The man looked carefully at the card.
"All right," he said at last; "hand over the flowers. They are not so
bad," he added, more willing to prize them now that they were his
(things do look different when they are your own, don't they?). "Here,
Humphreys, put these in a jug of water till I go home. And get this
out."
[Illustration: "'HERE, HUMPHREYS, PUT THESE IN A JUG OF WATER TILL I GO
HOME'"
[_Page 16_]
A pale young man in spectacles appeared from a sort of dark cave at the
back of the shop, took flowers and ticket, and was swallowed up again in
the darkness of the cave.
"Oh, thank you!" said Dickie fervently. "I shall live but to repay your
bounteous gen'rosity."
"None of your cheek," said the pawnbroker, reddening, and there was an
awkward pause.
"It's not cheek; I meant it," said Dickie at last, speaking very
earnestly. "You'll see, some of these days. I read an interesting Nar
Rataive about a Lion the King of Beasts and a Mouse, that small and Ty
Morous animal, which if you have not heard it I will now Pur seed to
relite."
"You're a rum little kid, I don't think," said the man. "Where do you
learn such talk?"
"It's the wye they talk in books," said Dickie, suddenly returning to
the language of his aunt. "You bein' a toff I thought you'd unnerstand.
My mistike. No 'fense."
"Mean to say you can talk like a book when you like, and cut it off
short like that?"
"I can Con-vers like Lords and Lydies," said Dickie, in the accents
of the gutter, "and your noble benefacteriness made me seek to express
my feelinks with the best words at me Command."
"Fond of books?"
"I believe you," said Dickie, and there were no more awkward pauses.
When the pale young man came back with something wrapped in a bit of
clean rag, he said a whispered word or two to the pawnbroker, who
unrolled the rag and looked closely at the rattle.
"So it is," he said, "and it's a beauty too, let alone anything else."
"Isn't he?" said Dickie, touched by this praise of his treasured
Tinkler.
"I've got something else here that's got the same crest as your rattle."
"Crest?" said Dickie; "isn't that what you wear on your helmet in the
heat and press of the Tower Nament?"
The pawnbroker explained that crests no longer live exclusively on
helmets, but on all sorts of odd things. And the queer little animal,
drawn in fine scratches on the side of the rattle, was, it seemed, a
crest.
"Here, Humphreys," he added, "give it a rub up and bring that seal
here."
The pale young man did something to Tinkler with some pinky powder and a
brush and a wash-leather, while his master fitted together the two
halves of a broken white cornelian.
"It came out of a seal," he said, "and I don't mind making you a present
of it."
"Oh!" said Dickie, "you are a real rightern." And he rested his crutch
against the counter expressly to clasp his hands in ecstasy as boys in
books did.
"My young man shall stick it together with cement," the pawnbroker went
on, "and put it in a little box. Don't you take it out till to-morrow
and it'll be stuck fast. Only don't go trying to seal with it, or the
sealing-wax will melt the cement. It'll bring you luck, I shouldn't
wonder."
(It did; and such luck as the kind pawnbroker never dreamed of. But that
comes further on in the story.)
Dickie left the shop without his moonflowers, indeed, but with his
Tinkler now whitely shining, and declared to be "real silver, and mind
you take care of it, my lad," his white cornelian seal carefully packed
in a strong little cardboard box with metal corners. Also a
broken-backed copy of "Ingoldsby Legends" and one of "Mrs. Markham's
English History," which had no back at all. "You must go on trying to
improve your mind," said the pawnbroker fussily. He was very pleased
with himself for having been so kind. "And come back and see me--say
next month."
"I will," said Dickie. "A thousand blessings from a grateful heart. I
will come back. I say, you are good! Thank you, thank you--I will come
back next month, and tell you everything I have learned from the Perru
Sal of your books."
"Perusal," said the pawnbroker--"that's the way to pernounce it.
Good-bye, my man, and next month."
But next month found Dickie in a very different place from the
pawnbroker's shop, and with a very different person from the pawnbroker
who in his rural retirement at Brockley gardened in such a gentlemanly
way.
Dickie went home--his aunt was still out. His books told him that
treasure is best hidden under loose boards, unless of course your house
has a secret panel, which his had not. There was a loose board in his
room, where the man "saw to" the gas. He got it up, and pushed his
treasures as far in as he could--along the rough, crumbly surface of the
lath and plaster.
Not a moment too soon. For before the board was coaxed quite back into
its place the voice of the aunt screamed up.
"Come along down, can't you? I can hear you pounding about up there.
Come along down and fetch me a ha'porth o' wood--I can't get the kettle
to boil without a fire, can I?"
When Dickie came down his aunt slightly slapped him, and he took the
halfpenny and limped off obediently.
It was a very long time indeed before he came back. Because before he
got to the shop with no window to it, but only shutters that were put up
at night, where the wood and coal were sold, he saw a Punch and Judy
show. He had never seen one before, and it interested him extremely. He
longed to see it unpack itself and display its wonders, and he followed
it through more streets than he knew; and when he found that it was not
going to unpack at all, but was just going home to its bed in an old
coach-house, he remembered the fire-wood; and the halfpenny clutched
tight and close in his hand seemed to reproach him warmly.
He looked about him, and knew that he did not at all know where he was.
There was a tall, thin, ragged man lounging against a stable door in the
yard where the Punch and Judy show lived. He took his clay pipe out of
his mouth to say--
"What's up, matey? Lost your way?"
Dickie explained.
"It's Lavender Terrace where I live," he ended--"Lavender Terrace,
Rosemary Street, Deptford."
"I'm going that way myself," said the man, getting away from the wall.
"We'll go back by the boat if you like. Ever been on the boat?"
"No," said Dickie.
"Like to?"
"Don't mind if I do," said Dickie.
It was very pleasant with the steamboat going along in such a hurry,
pushing the water out of the way, and puffing and blowing, and something
beating inside it like a giant's heart. The wind blew freshly, and the
ragged man found a sheltered corner behind the funnel. It was so
sheltered, and the wind had been so strong that Dickie felt sleepy. When
he said, "'Ave I bin asleep?" the steamer was stopping at a pier at a
strange place with trees.
"Here we are!" said the man. "'Ave you been asleep? Not 'alf! Stir
yourself, my man; we get off here."
"Is this Deptford?" Dickie asked. And the people shoving and crushing to
get off the steamer laughed when he said it.
"Not exackly," said the man, "but it's all right. This 'ere's where we
get off. You ain't had yer tea yet, my boy."
It was the most glorious tea Dickie had ever imagined. Fried eggs and
bacon--he had one egg and the man had three--bread and butter--and if
the bread was thick, so was the butter--and as many cups of tea as you
liked to say thank you for. When it was over the man asked Dickie if he
could walk a little way, and when Dickie said he could they set out in
the most friendly way side by side.
"I like it very much, and thank you kindly," said Dickie presently. "And
the tea and all. An' the egg. And this is the prettiest place ever I
see. But I ought to be getting 'ome. I shall catch it a fair treat as it
is. She was waitin' for the wood to boil the kettle when I come out."
"Mother?"
"Aunt. Not me real aunt. Only I calls her that."
"She any good?"
"Ain't bad when she's in a good temper."
"That ain't what she'll be in when you gets back. Seems to me you've
gone and done it, mate. Why, it's hours and hours since you and me got
acquainted. Look! the sun's just going."
It was, over trees more beautiful than anything Dickie had ever seen,
for they were now in a country road, with green hedges and green grass
growing beside it, in which little round-faced flowers grew--daisies
they were--even Dickie knew that.
"I got to stick it," said Dickie sadly. "I'd best be getting home."
"I wouldn't go 'ome, not if I was you," said the man. "I'd go out and
see the world a bit, I would."
"What--me?" said Dickie.
"Why not? Come, I'll make you a fair offer. Ye come alonger me an' see
life! I'm a-goin' to tramp as far as Brighton and back, all alongside
the sea. Ever seed the sea?"
"No," said Dickie. "Oh, no--no, I never."
"Well, you come alonger me. I ain't 'it yer, have I, like what yer aunt
do? I give yer a ride in a pleasure boat, only you went to sleep, and I
give you a tea fit for a hemperor. Ain't I?"
"You 'ave that," said Dickie.
"Well, that'll show you the sort of man I am. So now I make you a fair
offer. You come longer me, and be my little 'un, and I'll be your daddy,
and a better dad, I lay, nor if I'd been born so. What do you say,
matey?"
The man's manner was so kind and hearty, the whole adventure was so
wonderful and new....
"Is it country where you going?" said Dickie, looking at the green
hedge.
"All the way, pretty near," said the man. "We'll tramp it, taking it
easy, all round the coast, where gents go for their outings. They've
always got a bit to spare then. I lay you'll get some color in them
cheeks o' yours. They're like putty now. Come, now. What you say? Is it
a bargain?"
[Illustration: "HE LAY FACE DOWNWARD ON THE ROAD AND TURNED UP HIS BOOT"
[_Page 25_]
"It's very kind of you," said Dickie, "but what call you got to do it?
It'll cost a lot--my victuals, I mean. What call you got to do it?"
The man scratched his head and hesitated. Then he looked up at the sky
and then down at the road--they were resting on a heap of stones.
At last he said, "You're a sharp lad, you are--bloomin' sharp. Well, I
won't deceive you, matey. I want company. Tramping alone ain't no beano
to me. An' as I gets my living by the sweat of charitable ladies an'
gents it don't do no harm to 'ave a little nipper alongside. They comes
down 'andsomer if there's a nipper. An' I like nippers. Some blokes
don't, but I do."
Dickie felt that this was true. But--"We'll be beggars, you mean?" he
said doubtfully.
"Oh, don't call names," said the man; "we'll take the road, and if kind
people gives us a helping hand, well, so much the better for all
parties, if wot they learned me at Sunday-school's any good. Well, there
it is. Take it or leave it."
The sun shot long golden beams through the gaps in the hedge. A bird
paused in its flight on a branch quite close and clung there swaying. A
real live bird. Dickie thought of the kitchen at home, the lamp that
smoked, the dirty table, the fender full of ashes and dirty paper, the
dry bread that tasted of mice, and the water out of the broken
earthenware cup. That would be his breakfast, when he had gone to bed
crying after his aunt had slapped him.
"I'll come," said he, "and thank you kindly."
"Mind you," said the man carefully, "this ain't no kidnapping. I ain't
'ticed you away. You come on your own free wish, eh?"
"Oh, yes."
"Can you write?"
"Yes," said Dickie, "if I got a pen."
"I got a pencil--hold on a bit." He took out of his pocket a new
envelope, a new sheet of paper, and a new pencil ready sharpened by
machinery. It almost looked, Dickie thought, as though he had brought
them out for some special purpose. Perhaps he had.
"Now," said the man, "you take an' write--make it flat agin the sole of
me boot." He lay face downward on the road and turned up his boot, as
though boots were the most natural writing-desks in the world.
"Now write what I say: 'Mr. Beale. Dear Sir. Will you please take me on
tramp with you? I 'ave no father nor yet mother to be uneasy' (Can you
spell 'uneasy'? That's right--you _are_ a scholar!), 'an' I asks you let
me come alonger you.' (Got that? All right, I'll stop a bit till you
catch up. Then you say) 'If you take me along I promise to give you all
what I earns or gets anyhow, and be a good boy, and do what you say. And
I shall be very glad if you will. Your obedient servant----' What's your
name, eh?"
"Dickie Harding."
"Get it wrote down, then. Done? I'm glad I wasn't born a table to be
wrote on. Don't it make yer legs stiff, neither!"
He rolled over, took the paper and read it slowly and with difficulty.
Then he folded it and put it in his pocket.
"Now we're square," he said. "That'll stand true and legal in any
police-court in England, that will. And don't you forget it."
To the people who live in Rosemary Terrace the words "police-court" are
very alarming indeed. Dickie turned a little paler and said, "Why
police? I ain't done nothing wrong writin' what you telled me?"
"No, my boy," said the man, "you ain't done no wrong; you done right.
But there's bad people in the world--police and such--as might lay it up
to me as I took you away against your will. They could put a man away
for less than that."
"But it ain't agin my will," said Dickie; "I want to!"
"That's what _I_ say," said the man cheerfully. "So now we're agreed
upon it, if you'll step it we'll see about a doss for to-night; and
to-morrow we'll sleep in the bed with the green curtains."
"I see that there in a book," said Dickie, charmed. "He Reward the Wake,
the last of the English, and I wunnered what it stood for."
"It stands for laying out," said the man (and so it does, though that's
not at all what the author of "Hereward" meant it to mean)--"laying out
under a 'edge or a 'aystack or such and lookin' up at the stars till you
goes by-by. An' jolly good business, too, fine weather. An' then you
'oofs it a bit and resties a bit, and some one gives you something to
'elp you along the road, and in the evening you 'as a glass of ale at
the Publy Kows, and finds another set o' green bed curtains. An' on
Saturday you gets in a extra lot of prog, and a Sunday you stays where
you be and washes of your shirt."
"Do you have adventures?" asked Dick, recognizing in this description a
rough sketch of the life of a modern knight-errant.
"'Ventures? I believe you!" said the man. "Why, only last month a brute
of a dog bit me in the leg, at a back door Sutton way. An' once I see a
elephant."
"Wild?" asked Dickie, thrilling.
"Not azackly wild--with a circus 'e was. But big! Wild ones ain't 'alf
the size, I lay! And you meets soldiers, and parties in red coats
ridin' on horses, with spotted dawgs, and motors as run you down and
take your 'ead off afore you know you're dead if you don't look alive.
Adventures? I should think so!"
"Ah!" said Dickie, and a full silence fell between them.
"Tired?" asked Mr. Beale presently.
"Just a tiddy bit, p'raps," said Dickie bravely, "but I can stick it."
"We'll get summat with wheels for you to-morrow," said the man, "if it's
only a sugar-box; an' I can tie that leg of yours up to make it look
like as if it was cut off."
"It's this 'ere nasty boot as makes me tired," said Dickie.
"Hoff with it," said the man obligingly; "down you sets on them stones
and hoff with it! T'other too if you like. You can keep to the grass."
The dewy grass felt pleasantly cool and clean to Dickie's tired little
foot, and when they crossed the road where a water-cart had dripped it
was delicious to feel the cool mud squeeze up between your toes. That
was charming; but it was pleasant, too, to wash the mud off on the wet
grass. Dickie always remembered that moment. It was the first time in
his life that he really enjoyed being clean. In the hospital you were
almost too clean; and you didn't do it yourself. That made all the
difference. Yet it was the memory of the hospital that made him say, "I
wish I could 'ave a bath."
"So you shall," said Mr. Beale; "a reg'ler wash all over--this very
night. I always like a wash meself. Some blokes think it pays to be
dirty. But it don't. If you're clean they say 'Honest Poverty,' an' if
you're dirty they say 'Serve you right.' We'll get a pail or something
this very night."
"You _are_ good," said Dickie. "I do like you."
Mr. Beale looked at him through the deepening twilight--rather queerly,
Dickie thought. Also he sighed heavily.
"Oh, well--all's well as has no turning; and things don't always----
What I mean to say, you be a good boy and I'll do the right thing by
you."
"I know you will," said Dickie, with enthusiasm. "_I_ know 'ow good you
are!"
"Bless me!" said Mr. Beale uncomfortably. "Well, there. Step out, sonny,
or we'll never get there this side Christmas."
* * * * *
Now you see that Mr. Beale may be a cruel, wicked man who only wanted to
get hold of Dickie so as to make money out of him; and he may be going
to be very unkind indeed to Dickie when once he gets him away into the
country, and is all alone with him--and his having that paper and
envelope and pencil all ready looks odd, doesn't it? Or he may be a
really benevolent person. Well, you'll know all about it presently.
* * * * *
"And--here we are," said Mr. Beale, stopping in a side-street at an open
door from which yellow light streamed welcomingly. "Now mind you don't
contradict anything wot I say to people. And don't you forget you're my
nipper, and you got to call me daddy."
"I'll call you farver," said Dickie. "I got a daddy of my own, you
know."
"Why," said Mr. Beale, stopping suddenly, "you said he was dead."
"So he is," said Dickie; "but 'e's my daddy all the same."
"Oh, come on," said Mr. Beale impatiently. And they went in.