 CHAPTER VI. PART I. BARRIED TREASURE. And then, as he stood there in the sunshine, he suddenly knew. Everything succeeded in dreaming once again the dream which he had so longed to dream. Dickie Harding looked out the window of the dream house in Deptford into the dream garden, with its cut yew trees and box avenues and bowling greens, and perceived without doubt that this was no dream, but real, as real is the other Deptford where he had sown artistic birdseed and gathered moon-flowers and reaped the silver seeds of magic, for it was magic. Dickie was sure of it now. He had not lived in the time of the first James, be sure, without hearing magic talked of, and it seemed quite plain to him that if this that had happened to him was not magic, then there never was and never would be any magic to happen to any one. He turned from the window and looked at the tapestry-hung room, the big bed, the pleasant wrinkled face of the nurse, and he knew that all this was as real as anything that had happened to him in that other life where he was a little lame boy who took the road with a dirty tramp for father and lay in the bed with green curtains. Was thy friend well in thy dream? the nurse asked. Yes, oh yes, said Dickie, and I carved boxes in my dream and sold them, and I want to learn a lot more things so that when I go back again, I mean, when I dream that dream again I shall be able to earn more money. To shame that one of thy names should have to work for money, said the nurse. It isn't my name there, said Dickie, and old Sebastian told me everyone ought to do some duty to his country or he wasn't worth his meat and ale, and you don't know how good it is having money that you've earned yourself. I ought to, she said, I've earned mine long enough. Now hasten, dress, and then breakfast and thy fencing lesson. When the fencing lesson was over, Dickie hesitated. He wanted, of course, to hurry off to Sebastian and go on learning how to make a galleon. But also he wanted to learn some trade that he could teach Beale at Deptford, and he knew quite as surely as any master craftsman could have known it that nothing which required delicate handling, such as wood carving or the making of toy boats, could ever be mastered by Beale. But Beale was certainly fond of dogs. Dickie remembered how little true had cuddled up to him and nestled inside his coat when he lay down to sleep under the newspapers and the bits of sacking in Lavender Terrace, Rosemary Lane. So Dickie went his way to the kennels to talk to the kennelmen. He had been there before with Master Roger Frye, his fencing master, but he had never spoken to the kennelmen. And when he got to the kennels he knocked on the door of the kennelmen's house and called out, What ho! within there? Just as people do in old plays. And the door was thrown open by a man in a complete suit of leather, and when Dickie looked in that man's face he saw that it was the face of the man who had lived next door in Lavender Terrace, Rosemary Lane, the man who dug up the garden for the parrot seed. Why, said Dickie, it's you! Who would it be but me, little Master? The man asked with a respectful salute, and Dickie perceived that though this man had the face of the man next door, he had not the man next door's memories. Do you live here? he asked cautiously. Always, I mean. Where else should I live? The man asked, that have served my lord your father all my time, boy and man, and know every hair of every dog my lord owns. Dickie thought that was a good deal to know, and so it was. He stayed an hour at the kennels and came away knowing very much more about dogs than he did before, though some of the things he learned would surprise a modern veterinary surgeon very much indeed. But the dogs seemed well and happy, though they were doctored with herb tea instead of stuff from the chemists, and the charms that were set over them to make them swift and strong certainly did not make them any the less strong and swift. When Dickie had learned as much about dogs as he felt he could bear for that day, he felt free to go down to the dockyard and go on learning how ships were built. Sebastian looked up at the voice and ceased the blows with which his axe was smoothing a great tree-chunk that was to be amassed, and smiled in answer to his smile. Oh, what a long time since I have seen thee, Dickie cried! And Sebastian, gently mocking him, answered, A great while indeed! Two whole long days! And those thou spent merry-making in the king's water-pagent! Two days! A great while! A great, great while! I want you to teach me everything you know, said Dickie, picking up an all and feeling its point. Have patience with me, laughed Sebastian! I will teach thee all thou canst learn, but not all in one while. Little by little, slow and sure. You must not think, said Dickie, that it's only play, and that I do not need to learn because I am my father's son. Should I think so, Sebastian asked? I, that have sailed with Captain Drake and Captain Raleigh, and seen how a gentleman-venturer needs to turn his hand to every guest-craft? If thou so pleased to learn as Sebastian is to teach, then he'll be as quick to teach as thou to learn. And so to work! He fetched out from the shed the ribs of the little galleon that he and Dickie had begun to put together, and the two set to work on it. It was a happy day, and one happiness was to all the other happinesses of that day as the sun is to little stars, and that happiness was the happiness of being once more a little boy who did not need to use a crutch. And now the beautiful, spacious life opened once more for Dickie, and he learned many things and found the days all good and happy and all the nights white and peaceful in the big house and the beautiful garden on the slopes above Deptford. And the nights had no dreams in them, and in the days Dickie lived gaily and worthily the life of the son of a great and noble house, and now he had no prickings of conscience about Beale, left alone in the little house in Deptford, because one day he said to his nurse, How long did it take me to dream that dream about making the boxes and earning the money in the ugly place I told you of? Dreams about that place, she answered him, take none of our time here, and dreams about this place take none of what is time in that other place, but my dream endured all night. Not so, said the nurse, smiling between her white-cap frills, it was after the dream that sleep came a whole good nightful of it. So Dickie felt that for Beale no time at all had passed, and that when he went back, which he meant to do, he would get back to Deptford at the same instant as he left it, which is the essence of this particular kind of white magic. And thus it happened that when he did go back to Mr. Beale, he went because his heart called him and not for any other reason at all. Days and weeks and months went by, and it was autumn, and the apples were ripe on the trees and the grapes ripe on the garden walls and trellises. And then came a day when all the servants seemed suddenly to go mad. A great rushing madness of mops and brooms and dusters and pails and everything in the house already perfectly clean was cleaned anew, and everything that was already polished was polished freshly, and when Dickie had been turned out of three rooms one after the other, had tumbled over a pail and had a dishcloth pinned to his doublet by an angry cook, he sought out the nurse, very busy in the linen room, and asked her what all the fuss was about. It can't be a spring cleaning, he said, because it's the wrong time of year. Never say I did not tell thee, she answered, unfolding a great embroidered cupboard cloth and holding it up critically. Tomorrow thy father and mother come home, and thy baby brother, and today, so night, thy little cousins come to visit thee. How perfectly glorious, said Dickie! But you didn't tell me. If I didn't, it was because you never asked. I—I didn't dare to, he said dreamily. I was so afraid, you see, I'd never seen them. Afraid, she said, laying away the folded cloth and taking out another from the deep press, oaken with smooth-worn brown iron hinges and lock, never seen thy father and mother for sooth. Perhaps it was the fever, said Dickie, feeling rather deceitful. You said it made me forget things. I don't remember them. Not at all I don't. Do not say that to them, the nurse said, looking at him very gravely. I won't, unless they asked me, he added. O nurse, let me do something too. What can I do to help? Thou canst gather such flowers as are left in the garden to make a nose-gay for thy mother's room, and set them in order in fair water, and bid thy tutor teach thee a welcome song to say to them when they come in. Gathering the flowers and arranging them was pleasant and easy, making so intimate a favour from the sour-faced tutor whom he so much disliked was neither easy nor pleasant. But Dickie did it, and the tutor was delighted to set him to learn a particularly hard and uninteresting piece of poetry beginning. Happy is he who to sweet home retired shuns glory so admired, and to himself lives free, while he who strives with pride to climb the skies falls down with foul disgrace before he dies. Dickie could not help thinking that the father and mother who were to be his in this beautiful world might have preferred something simpler and more affectionate from their little boy than this difficult piece whose last verse was the only one which seemed to Dickie to mean anything in particular. In this verse Dickie was made to remark that he hoped people would say of him, he died a good old man which he did not hope, and indeed had never so much as thought of. The poetry he decided would have been nicer if it had been more about his father and mother and less about fame and trees and burdens. He felt this so much that he tried to write a poem himself and got as far as. They say there is no other can take the place of mother, I say there is no one I'd rather see than my father. But he could not think of any more to say, and besides he had a haunting idea that the first two lines, which were quite the best, were not his own make-up. So he abandoned the writing of poetry deciding that it was not his line, and painfully learned the dismal verses appointed by his tutor. But he never got them said. When the bustle of a rival had calmed a little, Dickie, his heart beating very fast indeed, found himself led by his tutor into the presence of the finest gentleman and the dearest lady he had ever beheld. The tutor gave him a little push so that he had to go forward two steps and to stand alone on the best carpet which had been spread in their honour. And hissed in a savage whisper, Recite your song of welcome. Happy the man began, Dickie, in tones of gloom and tremblingly pronounced the first lines of that unpleasing poem. But he had not got to strive with pride before the dear lady caught him in her arms exclaiming, Bless my dear son, how he has grown! And the fine gentleman thumped him on the back and bade him bear himself like a gentleman's son, and not like a queasy square-toes. And they both laughed, and he cried a little, and the tutor seemed to be blotted out, and there they were, all three as jolly as if they had known each other all their lives. And a stout young nurse brought the baby, and Dickie loved it, and felt certain it loved him, though it only said gu-ga-gu, exactly as your baby brother does now, and got hold of Dickie's hair and pulled it and would not let go. There was a glorious dinner, and Dickie waited on this new father of his, changed his plate, and poured wine out of a silver jug into the silver cup that my lord drank from. And after dinner the dear lady mother must go all over the house to see everything because she had been so long away, and Dickie walked in the garden among the ripe apples and grapes with his father's hand on his shoulder, the happiest, proudest boy in all of Depford, or in all Kent, either. His father asked what he had learned, and Dickie told, dwelling perhaps more on the riding and the fencing and the bowls and the music than on the sour-faced tutor's side of the business. But I've learned a lot of Greek and Latin, too, he added in a hurry, and poetry and things like that. I fear, said the father, thou dost not love thy book. I do, sir, yet I love my sports better, said Dickie, and looked up to meet the fond, proud look of eyes as blue as his own. Thou art a good, modest lad, said his father, when they began their third round of the garden, not once to ask for what I promised thee. Dickie could not stand this. I might have asked, he said presently, but I have forgot what the promise was, the fever. Aye, aye, poor lad, and of a high truth, too, owned he had forgot. Come, jog that poor, peaked remembrance. Dickie could hardly believe the beautiful hope that whispered in his ear. I almost think I remember, he said. Father, did you promise? I promised, if thou wast a good lad and biddable, and constant at thy book and thy manly exercises, to give thee so soon as thou shouldst have learned to ride him. A little horse, said Dickie breathlessly. Oh, father, not a little horse! It was good to hear one's father laugh that big, jolly laugh, to feel one's father arm laid like that across one's shoulders. The little horse turned round to look at them from his stall in the big stables. It was really rather a big horse. What colored horse would you choose if a horse were to be yours for the choosing? Dickie would have chosen a gray, and a gray it was. What is his name, Dickie asked, when he had admired the gray's every point, had had him saddled, and had ridden him proudly round the pasture in his father's sight. We call him Rosenant, said his father, because he is so fat, and he laughed, but Dickie did not understand the joke. He had not read Don Quixote, as you no doubt have. I should like, said Dickie, sitting square on the gray, to call him Crutch. May I? Crutch? The father repeated. Because his paces are so easy, Dickie explained. He got off the horse very quickly and came to his father. I mean, even a lame boy could ride him. Oh, father, I am so happy, he said, and burrowed his nose in a velvet doublet, and perhaps sniveled a little. I am so glad I am not lame. Fancyful as ever, said his father, come, come, thou art weak yet from the fever. Be a man, remember of what blood thou art, and thy mother, she also had the gift for thee from thy grandfather. Has thou forgotten that? It hangs to the book learning. A reward, and thou hast earned it. I've forgotten that, too, said Dickie. You aren't vexed because I forget. I can't help it, father. That I'll warrant thou cannot. Come now to thy mother. My little son, the Earl of Silly chid me but this summer for sparing the rod and spoiling the child. But they growth in all things bears out in what I answered him. I said, the boys of our house, my lord, take that pride in it that they learn of their own free will what many an Earl's son must be driven to with rods. He took me. His own son is little better than an idiot, and not but the rod to blame for it, I verily believe. They found the lady, mother, and her babe, by a little fire in a wide hearth. Our son comes to claim the garden of learning, the father said, and the lady stood up with the babe in her arms. Call the nurse to take him, she said, but Dickie held out his arms. Oh, mother, he said, and it was the first time in all his life that he had spoken that word to any one. Mother, do let me hold him. A warm, stiff bundle was put into his careful arms, and his little brother instantly caught at his hair. It hurt, but Dickie liked it. The lady went to one of the carved cabinets, and with a bright key from a very bright bunch unlocked one of the heavy-paneled doors. She drew out of the darkness within a dull-colored leather bag embroidered in gold thread and crimson silk. He has forgot, said Sir Richard, in an undertone, what it was that the grandfather promised him, though he has well earned the same, to his the fever. The mother put the bag in Dickie's hands. Counted out, she said, taking her babe from him, and Dickie untied the leather string and poured out onto the polished long table what the bag held, twenty gold pieces. And all with the image of our late dear queen, said the mother, the image of that incomparable virgin majesty, whose example is a beacon for all time to all virtuous ladies. Ah, yes indeed, said the father. Put them up in the bag, boy. They are thine own to thee to spend as thou wilt. Not unwisely, said the mother gently. As he wills, the father firmly said, wisely or unwisely, as he wills, and none, he added, shall ask how they be spent. The lady frowned, she was a careful housewife, and twenty gold pieces were a large sum. I will not waste it, said Dickie. Mother you may trust me not to waste it. It was the happiest moment of his life to Dickie. The little horse, the gold pieces. Yes, but much more the sudden, good, safe feeling of father and mother and little brother, of a place where he belonged, where he loved and was loved, and by his equals. For he felt that as far as a child can be the equal of grown people, he was the equal of these. And Beale was not his equal, either in the graces of the body or in the inner treasures of mind and heart, and hitherto he had loved only Beale, had only so far as he could remember been loved by Beale and by that shadowy father, his daddy, who had died in hospital, and dying had given him the rattle, his tinkler, that was Harding's luck. And in the very heart of that happiest moment came, like a sharp dagger-prick, the thought of Beale. What wonders could be done for Beale with those twenty-five gold sovereigns? For Dickie thought of them just as sovereigns, and so they were. And as these people who loved him, who were his own, drew nearer and nearer to his heart, his heart, quickened by love of them, felt self-drawn more and more to Mr. Beale, Mr. Beale the tramp who had been kind to him when no one else was. So when the nurse took him, tired with new happinesses to that beautiful tapestry room of his, he roused himself from his good soft sleepiness to say, Nurse, you know a lot of things, don't you? I know what I know, she said, undoing buttons with speed and authority. You know that other dream of mine, that dream of mine I mean the dream of a dreadful place? And then? Could I take anything out of this dream, I mean, out of this time into the other one? You could, but you must bring it back again when you come. And you could bring things thence, certain things, your rattle, your moon-seeds, your seal. He stared at her. You do know things, he said, but I want to take things there and leave them there. She knitted thoughtful brows. There's three hundred thick years, but I don't know the house. There's three hundred thick years between now and then, she said. Oh, yes, I know, and if you held it in your hand you'd lose it like as not in some of the years you go through. Money's mortal heavy and travels slow, slower than the soul of you, my lamb. Someone would have time to see it and snatch it and hold to it. Isn't there any way, Tickey asked, insisting to himself that he wasn't sleepy? There's the way of everything, the earth, she said. And you can lie down on the spot where it's buried. And then, when you get back into the other dream, the kind, thick earth will have hid your secret, and you can dig it up again. It will be there, unless other hands have dug there in the three hundred years. You must take your chance of that. Will you help me, Tickey asked? I shall need to dig it very deep if I am to cheat three hundred years. And suppose, he added, struck by a sudden and unpleasing thought, there's a house built on the place. I should be mixed up with the house. Two things can't be in the same place at the same time, my tutor told me that. And the house would be so much stronger than me, it would get the best of it, and where should I be then? I'll ask where thou'd be, was the very surprising answer. I'll ask someone who knows. But it'll take time. Put thy money in the great press, and I'll keep the key. And next Friday, as ever is, come your little cousins. They came. It was more difficult with them than it was with the grown-ups to conceal the fact that he had not always been the Dickey he was now. But it was not so difficult as you might suppose. It was no harder than not talking about the dreams you had last night. End of Section 10. Section 11 of Harding's Luck. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Harding's Luck by Edith Nesbitt. Section 11. Chapter 6, Part 2. And now he had indeed a full life. Headwork, bodily exercises, work, home life, and joyous hours of play with two children who understood play as the poor little dirty Deptford children do not and cannot understand it. He lived and learned, and felt more and more that this was the life to which he really belonged. And days and weeks and months went by, and nothing happened, and that is the happiest thing that can happen to anyone who was already happy. Then one night the nurse said, I have asked, you are to bury your treasure under the window of the solar parlor and lie down and sleep on it. You'll take no harm, and when you're asleep I will say the right words, and you'll wake under the same skies and not under a built house like as you feared. She wrapped him in a warm cloth mantle of her own, when she took him from his bed that night after all the family were asleep, and put on his shoes and led him to the hole she had secretly dug in below the window. They had put his embroidered leather bag of gold in a little wrought iron coffer that Sebastian had given him, and the nurse had tightly fastened the join of lid and box with wax and resin. The box was wrapped in a silk scarf and the whole packet put into a big earthenware jar with a lid, and the join of lid and jar was smeared with resin and covered with clay. The nurse had shown him how to do all this. Against the earth spirits and the three hundred years, she said. Now she lifted the jar into the hole and together they filled the hole with earth, treading it in with their feet. And when you would return, said the nurse, you know the way. Do I? You lay the rattle, the seal, and the moon-seeds as before and listen to the voices. And then Dicky lay down in the cloth cloak, and the nurse sat by him and held his hand till he fell asleep. It was June now and the scent of the roses was very sweet, and the nightingales kept him awake a while, but the sky overhead was an old friend of his, and as he lay he could see the shining of the dew among the grass-blades of the lawn. It was pleasant to lie again in the bed with the green curtains. When he awoke there was his old friend the starry sky, and for a moment he wondered. Then he remembered. He raised himself on his elbow. There were houses all about, little houses with lights in some of the windows. A broken pailing was quite close to him. There was no grass near, only rough, trampled earth. The smell all about him was not of roses but of dust-bins. There were no nightingales, but far away he could hear that restless roar that is the voice of London, and near at hand the foolish song and unsteady footfall of a man going home from the cat and whistle. He scratched across on the hard ground with a broken bit of plate to mark the spot, got up, and crept on hands and knees to the house, climbed in, and found the room where Beale lay asleep. Father, said Dickie next morning, as Mr. Beale stretched and grunted and rubbed sleepy eyes with his unwashed fist in the cold daylight that filled the front room of fifteen lavender terrace, Rosemary Lane. You got to take this house, that's what you got to do, you remember? You can't say I do, said Beale, scratching his head, but if the nipper says so, it is so. Let's go and get a mug and a doorstep and then we'll see. You get it if you're hungry, said Dickie. I'd rather wait here in case anybody else was to take the house. You go and see him now. You'll think you're a man in the regular work by your being up so early. Perhaps, said Beale thoughtfully, running his hand over the rustling stubble of his two days' beard, perhaps I'd better get a wash and a brush up first, eh? It might be worth it in the end. I'll have to go to the DOS to get our pram and things, anyhow. The landlord of the desired house really thought Mr. Beale a quite respectable working man, and Mr. Beale accounted for their lack of furniture by saying, quite truthfully, that he and his nipper had come up from Gravesend doing a bit of work on the way. I could, he added, quite untruthfully, give you the gentleman I worked with me for reference, Talbot his name is, a bald man with a squint and red ears, but perhaps this'll do as well. He pulled out of one pocket all their money, two pounds, eighteen shillings, except six pennies which he had put in the other pocket to rattle. He rattled them now. I'm anxious, he said, confidentially, to get settled on account of the nipper. I don't deceive you. We ufted up not to waste our little bit, and he's a hoppy chap. That's odd, said the landlord. There was a lame boy lived there along of the last party that had it. It's a cripple's home by rights, I should think. Beal had not foreseen this difficulty and had no story ready, so he tried the truth. It's the same lad, mister, he said, that's why I'm rather set on the house. You see, it's omed him like, he added sentimentally. You was father, said the landlord sharply, and again Beal was inspired to truthfulness, quite a lot of it. No, he said cautiously, wish I was, the fact is the little chap's aunt wasn't much class, and I found him wandering, and not having none of my own I sort of adopted him. Like wandering hairs at the theatre, said the landlord, who had been told by Dickie's aunt that the ungrateful little woman had run away. I see. And he's a jolly little chap, said Beal, warming to his subject and forgetting his caution, as knowing is a dog ferret, and his patter, enough to make a cat laugh he is sometimes, and I'll pay a week down if you like, mister, and we'll get our bits of sticks in today. Well, said the landlord, taking a key from a nail on the wall, let's go down and have a look at the house. Where's the kid? He's there awaiting for me, said Beal, couldn't get him away. Dickie was very polite to the landlord, at whom in unhappier days he had sometimes made faces, and when the landlord went he had six of their shillings, and they had the key. So now we've got a home of our own, said Beal, rubbing his hands when they had gone through the house together, and Englishman's home is his castle, and what would the boxes you'll cut out, and the dogs what I'll pick up, bucking in palace'll look small alongside of us, eh, matey? He locked up the house and went to breakfast, Beal, gay as a lark, and Dickie rather silent. He was thinking over a new difficulty. It was all very well to bury twenty sovereigns, and to know exactly where they were, and they were his own beyond a doubt, but if anyone saw those sovereigns dug up, those sovereigns would be taken away from him. No one would believe that they were his own, and the earthenware pot was so big, and so many windows looked out on the garden. No one could hope to dig up a big thing like that from his back garden without attracting some attention. Besides, he doubted whether he was strong enough to dig it up, even if he could do so unobserved. He had not thought of this when he had put the gold there in that other life. He was so much stronger than. He sighed. Got the ump, mate, asked Beal, with his mouth full. No, I was just a-thinking. We'd best buy the stick's first things, said Beal. It's a cruel world. No stick's, no trust, is the landlord's motto. Do you want to know what sticks they bought? I will tell you. They bought a rusty old bedstead, very big, with lathes that hung loose like a hammock, and all its knobs gone, and only bare screws sticking up spikely. Also, a flock mattress and pillows of a dull dust color to go on the bed, and some blankets and sheets all matching the mattress to a shade. They bought a table and two chairs, and a kitchen fender with a round steel moon, only it was very rusty, and a hand-bowl for the sink and a small zinc bath to wash your shirt in, said Mr. Beal. Four plates, two cups and saucers, two each of knives, forks and spoons, a tin teapot, a quart jug, a pail, a bit of kidder minster carpet, half a pound of yellow soap, a scrubbing brush and broom, two towels, a kettle, a saucepan, and a baking dish, and a pint of paraffin. Also there was a tin lamp to hang on the wall with a dazzling crinkled tin reflector. This was the only thing that was new, and it cost ten pence half-penny. All the rest of the things together cost twenty-six shillings and seven pence half-penny, and I think they were very cheap. But they seemed very poor and very little of them when they were dumped down in the front room. The bed especially looked far from its best, a mere heap of loose iron. And we ain't got our drawing-room suit neither, said Mr. Beale. Ladies and gents, easy-chairs, four-occasionals, piano and fumed oak-bureau. Curtains, said Dickie. White curtains for the parlour and short blinds everywhere else. I'll go and get them while you clean the windows. That old shirt of mine, it won't hang through another washing. Clean them with that. You don't give your orders neither, said Beale, contentedly. The curtains and a pen-earth of tax, a hammer borrowed from a neighbour, and an hour's cheerful work completed the fortification of the Englishman's house against the inquisitiveness of passers-by. But the landlord frowned anxiously as he went past the house. Don't like all that white curtain, he told himself. Not much behind it, if you ask me. People don't go to that extreme in knotting him laced without there's something to hide, a house full of emptiness most likely. Inside, Dickie was telling a very astonished Mr. Beale that there was money buried in the garden. It was give me, said he, for learning of something, and we've got to get it up so as no one sees us. I can't think of nothing but build a chicken-house and then dig inside of it. I wish I was cleverer. Here Ward would have thought of something first go off. Don't you worry, said Beale, you're clever enough for this poor world. You're all right. Come on out and show us where you put it, just peg with your foot on the spot, looking up careless at the sky. They went out, and Dickie put his foot on the cross he had scratched with the broken bit of plate. It was close to the withered stalk of the moonflower. This here gardens in a poor state, said Beale in a loud voice, wants to turn it over is what I think, against the winter. I'll get a spade and have a turn out at this very day, so I will. This here old artichoke's got some roots all lay. The digging began at the fence, and reached the moonflower, whose roots were indeed very deep. Quite a hole, Mr. Beale dug, before the tall stalk sloped and fell with slow dignity, like a forest tree before the axe. Then the man and the child went in and brought out the kitchen table and chairs, and laid blankets over them to air in the autumn sunlight. Dickie played at houses under the table. It was not the sort of game he usually played, but the neighbors could not know that. The table happened to be set down just over the hole that held the roots of the moonflower. Dickie dug a little with a trowel in the blanket house. After dark they carried the blankets and things in. Then one of the blankets was nailed up over the top floor window, and on the iron bedstead's dingy mattress the resin was melted from the lid of the pot that Mr. Beale had brought in with the other things from the garden. Also it was melted from the crack of the iron casket. Mr. Beale's eyes, always rather prominent, almost resembled the eyes of the lobster, or the snail, as their gaze fell on the embroidered leather bag. And when Dickie opened this and showered the twenty gold coins into a hollow of the drab ticking, he closed his eyes inside and opened them again and said, Give you? They give you that? I don't believe you. You've got to believe me, said Dickie firmly. I never told you a lie, did I? Come to think of it, I don't know as you ever did, Beale admitted. Well, said Dickie, they was give me, see? We'll never change them, though, said Beale despondently. We'd get lagged for a cert. They'd say we pinched them. No they won't, because I've got a friend as he'll change him for me, and then we'll have new clobber and some more furniture and a carpet and a crockery basin to wash our hands and faces in instead of that old tin thing, and a bath we'll have, and you shall buy some more pups, and I'll get some proper carving tools, and our fortunes made, see? You nippers, said Beale, slowly and fondly. The best day's work ever I'd done was when I took up with you. You're straight you are, one of the best. Many's the boy would've done a bunk and took the shiners along with him. You stuck to old Beale, and he'll stick to you. That's all right, said Dickie, beginning to put the bright coins back into the bag. But it ain't all right, Beale insisted stubbornly. It ain't no good. I must have it all out or bust. I didn't never take you along on me because I fancied you like what I said. I was just a looking out for a nipper to shove through windows, see? Along with that red-headed chap what you never said eyes on. I've known that a long time, said Dickie, gravely watching the candle flicker on the bare mantel shelf. I didn't mean no good to you, not at first I didn't, said Beale. When you rode on the sole of my boot, I'd bought that bit of paper and pencil a purpose, there. You ain't done me no harm, anyway, said Dickie. Now I know I ain't. Because why? Because I took to you the very first day. I always been kind to you. You can't say I ain't. Mr. Beale was confused by the two desires which make it difficult to confess anything truthfully, the desire to tell the worst of oneself and the desire to do full justice to oneself at the same time. It is so very hard not to blacken the blackness or whiten the whiteness when one comes to trying to tell the truth about oneself. But I've been a beast all the same, said Mr. Beale helplessly. Oh, stow it, Dickie said. Now you've told me it's all square. You won't keep a down on me for it? Now should I, said Dickie, exasperated and very sleepy? Now all is open as the day, and we can pursue our career as honorable men and comrades in all high-end prize. I mean, he explained, noticing Mr. Beale's open mouth and eyes more lobster-like than ever. I mean, that's all right, father. And you see, it don't make any difference to me. I know you're straight now, even if it didn't begin just like that. Let's get to bed, shantis. Mr. Beale dreamed that he was trying to drown Dickie in a pond full of stewed eels. Dickie didn't dream at all. You may wonder why, since going to the beautiful other world took no time and was so easy, Dickie did not do it every night, or even at odd times during the day. Well the fact was, he dared not. He loved the other life so much that he feared that once again there he might not have the courage to return to Mr. Beale and Deptford and the feeling of dirty clothes and the smell of dustbins. It was no light thing to come back from that to this. And now he made a resolution, that he would not set up the charm of tinkler and seal and moon-seeds until he had established Mr. Beale in an honourable calling and made a life for him which he could be happy. A great undertaking for a child, yes. But then Dickie was not an ordinary child, or none of these adventures would ever have happened to him. The pawnbroker, always a good friend to Dickie, had the wit to see that the child was not lying when he said that the box and the bag and the gold pieces had been given to him. He changed the gold pieces stamped with the image of Queen Elizabeth for others stamped with the image of Queen Victoria. And he gave five pounds for the wrought iron box and owned that he should make a little, a very little out of it. And if your grand society friends give you any more treasures you know the house to come to, the fairest house in the trade, though I say it. Thank you very much, said Dickie, you've been a good friend to me. I hope some day I shall do you a better turn than the little you make out of my boxes and things. The Jew sold the wrought iron box that very weak for twenty guineas. And Dickie and Mr. Beale now possessed twenty-seven pounds. New clothes were bought, more furniture. Twenty-two pounds of the money was put in the savings bank. Dickie bought carving tools and went to the Goldsmiths Institute to learn how to use them. The front bedroom was fitted with a bench for Dickie. The back-sitting room was a kennel for the dogs which Mr. Beale instantly began to collect. The front room was a parlor, a real parlor. A decent young woman, Amelia by name, was engaged to come in every day and do for them. The clothes they wore were clean, the food they ate was good. Dickie's knowledge of an ordered life in a great house helped him to order life in a house that was little. And day by day they earned their living. The new life was fairly started, and now Dickie felt that he might dare to go back through the three hundred years to all that was waiting for him there. But I will only stay a month, he told himself, a month here and a month there, that will keep things even. Because if I were longer there than I am here I should not be growing up so fast here as I should there. And everything would be crooked. And how silly if I were a grown man in that life and had to come back and be a little boy in this. I do not pretend that the idea did not occur to Dickie. Now that Beale is fairly started he could do very well without me. But Dickie knew better. He dismissed the idea. Besides, Beale had been good to him and he loved him. The white curtains had now no sorted secrets to keep, and when the landlord called for the rent Mr. Beale was able to ask him to step in into a comfortable room with a horsehair sofa and a big worn easy chair, a carpet, four old mahogany chairs and a table with a clean blue and red checked cloth on it. There was a bright clock on the mantelpiece and vases with chrysanthemums in them, and there were red woolen curtains as well as the white lace ones. Here is Snugga Snugga in here, said the landlord. Not so dusty, said Beale, shining from soap. Have a look at my dogs. He succeeded in selling the landlord a pup for ten shillings and came back to Dickie sitting by the pleasant firelight. It's all very smart, he said, but don't you never feel the fidgets in your legs? I've kept steady and keep steady I will. But in the spring, when the weather gets a bit open, what do you say to shutting up the little house and taking the road for a bit? Gentlemen do it even, he added wistfully. Walking towers, they call him. I'd like it, said Dickie, but what about the dogs? Oh, Amelia'd do for them a fair treat. All but fan and fly, as'd go along with us. I don't know what it is, he said, makes me anchor so after the road. I was always like it from a boy. Couldn't get me to school so they couldn't. All is after birds nest or rabbits or the like. Not but what I liked it well enough where I was bred. I didn't tell you, did I? We passed close alongside our old home that time we slept among the firs-bushes. I don't suppose my father's alive now, but he was a game-all chap. Shouldn't wonder about what he'd stuck it out. Let's go and see him some day, said Dickie. I don't know, said Beal. You see, I was always a great anxiety to him. And besides, I shouldn't like to find him gone. Best not know nothing, that's what I say. But he sighed as he said it, and he filled his pipe in a thoughtful silence. CHAPTER VII PART I Dickie learns many things. That night Dickie could not sleep. And as he lay awake a great resolve grew strong within him. He would try once more the magic of the moon-seeds and the rattle and the white seal, and try to get back to that other world. So he crept down into the parlour where a little layer of clear red fire still burned. But now the moon-seeds and the voices and the magic were over, and Dickie awoke. Thrilled to feel how cleverly he had managed everything, moved his legs in the bed, rejoicing that he was no longer laying. Then he opened his eyes to feast them on the big, light tapestry room. But the room was not tapestryed. It was panelled. And it was rather dark, and it was so small as not to be much more than a cupboard. This surprised Dickie more than anything else that had ever happened to him, and it frightened him a little too. If the spell of the moon-seeds and the rattle and the white seal was not certain to take him where he wished to be, nothing in the world was certain. He might be anywhere where he didn't wish to be. He might be any one whom he did not wish to be. I'll never try it again, he said. If I get out of this I'll stick to the wood carving and not go venturing about any more among dreams and things. He got up and looked out of the narrow window, for me he saw a garden, but it was not a garden he had ever seen before. It had marble seats, balustrades, and the damp twos of autumn-hung chill about its almost unleafed trees. It might have been worse. It might have been a prison-yard, he told himself. Come, keep your heart up, wherever I've come to it's an adventure. He turned back to the room and looked for his clothes. There were no clothes there. But the shirt he had on was like the shirt he had slept in at the beautiful house. He turned to open the door, but there was no door, all was dark, even panelling. He was not shut in a room, but in a box—nonsense, boxes did not have beds in them and windows. And then suddenly he was no longer the clever person who had managed everything so admirably, who was living two lives with such credit in both, who was managing a grown man—for that grown man's good—but just a little boy rather badly frightened. The little shirt was the only thing that helped, and that only gave him the desperate courage to beat on the panels and shout, Nurse, Nurse, Nurse! A crack of light split and opened between two panels. They slid back and between them the nurse came in—the nurse with the rough and the frilled cap and the kind wrinkled face. He got his arms around her big comfortable waist. There, there, my lamb, she said, petting him. His clothes hung over her arm, his doublet and little fat-pitches, his stockings and the shoes with the rosettes. Oh, I am here! Oh, I am so glad! I thought I'd got to somewhere different. She sat down on the bed and began to dress him, soothing him back to confidence with gentle touches and pet names. "'Listen,' she said, when it came to the silver sugar-loaf buttons of the doublet, you must listen carefully. It is a month since you went away. But I thought time didn't move. I thought it was the money upset everything,' she said. "'It always does upset everything. I ought to have known. Now attend carefully. No one knows you had been away. You've seemed to be here, learning and playing and doing everything like you used. And you're on a visit now to your cousins, at your uncle's townhouse. And you all have lessons together, thy tutor gives them, and thy cousins love him no better than thou dost. All thou hast to do is forget thy dream and take up thy life here, and be slow to speak for a day or two, till thou hast grown used to thine own place. Thou wilt have lessons alone to-day. One of the cousins goes with his mother to be her page and bear her train at the king's revels at Whitehall, and the other must sit and sew her sampler. Her mother says she hath run wild too long. So Dickie had lessons alone with his detested tutor, and his relief from the panic fear of the morning raised his spirits to a degree that unfortunately found vent in what was, for him, extreme naughtiness. He drew a comic picture of his tutor. It really was rather like, with a scroll coming out of his mouth, and on the scroll the words, Because I am ugly, I need not be hateful. His tutor, who had a nasty way of creeping up behind people, came up behind him at the wrong moment. Dickie was caned on both hands and kept in. Also his dinner was bread and water. But he had to write out two hundred times, I am a bad boy, and ask the pardon of my good tutor, the fifth day of November, 1608. So he did not see his aunt and cousin in their Whitehall finery, and it was quite late in the afternoon, before he even saw his other cousin, who had been sampler sewing. He would not have written out the lines, he felt sure he would not, only he thought of his cousin, and wanted to see her again. For she was the only little girlfriend he had. When the last was done, he rushed into the room where she was. He was astonished to find that he knew his way about the house quite well, though he could not remember ever having been there before, and cried out, Thy task done, mine is too. Old parrot knows kept me hard at it, but I thought of thee, and for this once I did all his biddings. So now we are free, come play ball in the garden. His cousin looked up from her sampler, set the frame down, and jumped up. I am so glad, she said, I do hate this horrid sampler. And as she said it, Dickie had a most odd feeling, rather as if a clock had struck, or had stopped striking, a feeling of sudden change, but he could not wait to wonder about it, or to question what it was he really felt. His cousin was waiting. Come, Elfride, he said, and held out his hand. They went together into the garden. Now, if you have read a book called The House of Arden, you will already know that Dickie's cousins were called Elred and Elfride, and that their father, Lord Arden, had a beautiful castle by the sea, as well as a house in London, and that he and his wife were great favourites at the court of King James I. If you have not read that book, and didn't already know these things, well, you know them now. And Arden was Dickie's own name, too, in his old life, and his father was Sir Richard Arden of Detford and Aylesbury. And his tutor was Mr. Parados, called Parrot Nose for short, by his disrespectful pupils. Dickie and Elfride played ball, and they played hide-and-seek, and they ran races. He preferred play to talk just then. He did not want to let out the fact that he remembered nothing whatever of the doings of the last month. Elfride did not seem very anxious to talk either. The garden was most interesting, and the only blot on the scene was the black figure of the tutor walking up and down with a sour face, and his thumbs in one of his dull-looking books. The children sat down on the step of one of the stone seats, and Dickie was wondering why he had felt that queer clock-stopping feeling, when he was roused from his wanderings, by hearing Elfride say, Pleased to remember the fifth of November, the gunpowder treason and plot, I see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot. How odd, he thought! I didn't know that was so old as all this! And he remembered hearing his father, Sir Richard Arden, say, treason's a dangerous word to let lie on your lips these days. So he said, It is not a merry song, cousin, nor a safe one, it is best not to sing of treason. But it didn't come off, you know, and he's always burnt in the end. So already Guy Fawkes' burnings went on. Dickie wondered whether there would be a bonfire tonight. It was the fifth of November. He had had to write the date two hundred times, so he was fairly certain of it. He was afraid of saying too much or too little, and for the life of him he could not remember the date of the gunpowder plot. Still, he must say something. So he said, Are there more verses? No, said Elfride. I wonder, he said, trying to feel his way. What treason the ballad deals with? He felt it had been the wrong thing to say when Elfride answered in surprised tones. Don't you know? I know, and I know the names of the conspirators, and who they wanted to kill and everything. Tell me, seemed the wisest thing to say, and he said it as carelessly as he could. The king hadn't been fair to the Catholics, you know, said Elfride, who evidently knew all about the matter. So a lot of them decided to kill him, and the houses of Parliament. They made a plot. There were a whole lot of them in it. The clock-stopping feeling came on again. Elfride was different somehow. The Elfride, who had gone on the barge to Graves' end, and played with him at the Deatford House, had never used such expressions as a whole lot of them in it. He looked at her, and she went on. They said Lord Arton was in it, but he wasn't, and some of them were to pretend to be hunting, and to seize the Princess Elizabeth, and proclaim her queen, and the rest were to blow the houses of Parliament up when the king went to open them. I never heard this tale for my tutor, said Dickie, and without knowing why he felt uneasy, because he felt uneasy, he laughed. Then he said, Proceed, Cousin. Elfride went on telling him about the gunpowder plot, but he hardly listened. The stopped clock-feeling was growing so strong. But he heard her say, Mr. Tresham wrote to his relation, Lord Monteagle, that they were going to blow up the king, and he found himself saying, What king? So he knew the answer perfectly well. Why, King James I, said Elfride, and suddenly the horrible tutor pounced and got Elfride by the wrist. Then all in a moment everything grew confused. Mr. Parados was asking questions, and little Elfride was trying to answer them, and Dickie understood that the gunpowder plot had not happened yet, and that Elfride had given the whole show away, and how did she know, and the verse? Tell me all, every name, every particular, the loath some tutor was saying, or it will be the worst for thee and thy father. Elfride was positively green with terror, and looked appealingly at Dickie. Come, sir, he said, in his mantlet of voices he could manage. You frighten my cousin. It is but a tale, she told. She is always merry and full of many inventions. But the tutor would not be silenced. And it's in history, he heard Elfride say. What followed was a mist of horrible things. When the mist cleared, Dickie found himself alone in the house with Mr. Parados the nurse and the servants, for the Earl and Countess of Arden, Edward, and Elfride were lodged in the Tower of London on a charge of high treason. For this was, it seemed, the fifth of November, the day on which the gunpowder plot should have been carried out, and Elfride it was, and not Mr. Tresham, Lord Montecl's cousin, who had given away the whole business. But how had Elfride known? Could it be that she had dreams like his, and in those dreams visited later times when all this was matter of history? Dickie's brain felt fat, swollen, as though it would burst, and he was glad to go to bed, even in that cupboardy place with the panels. But he begged the nurse to leave the panel open. And when he woke next day it was all true. His aunt and uncle and his two cousins were in the Tower, and gloom hung over Arden House in Soho like a black thundercloud over a mountain. And the days went on. The lessons with Mr. Parados were a sort of inquisition torture to Dickie. For the tutor never let a day pass without trying to find out whether Dickie had shared in any way that guilty knowledge of Elfrides which had, so Mr. Parados insisted, overthrown the fell plot of the papists and preserved to a loyal people his most gracious majesty James I. And then one day, quite as though it were the most natural thing in the world, his cousin Edward and Lady Arden, his aunt, were set free from the Tower and came home. The King had suddenly decided that they, at least, had had nothing to do with the plot. Lady Arden cried all the time, and as Dickie owned to himself, there was enough to make her. But Edward was full of half-thought-out plans and schemes for being revenged on old Parados. And at last he really did arrange a scheme for getting Elfride out of the Tower, a perfectly workable scheme. But what is more, it worked. If you want to know how it was done, ask some grown-up to tell you how Lady Nitzdale got her husband out of the Tower when he was a prisoner there and in danger of having his head cut off, and you will readily understand the kind of scheme it was. A necessary part of it was the dressing-up of Elfride in boys' clothes, and her coming out of the Tower pretending to be Edward, who, with Richard, had come in to visit Lord Arden. Then the guard at the Tower gateway was changed, and another Edward came out, and they all got into the coach, and there was Elfride under the coach-seat, among the straw and other people's feet, and they all hugged each other in the dark coach as it jilted through the snowy streets to Arden's house in Soho. He, feeling very small and bewildered among these dangerous happenings, found himself suddenly caught by the arm the nurse's hand it was. Now, she said, Master Richard will go take off his fine suit and. He did not hear the end, for he was pushed out of the room. Very discontentedly he found his way to his paneled bed-closet and took off the smart velvet and fur which he had worn in his visit to the Tower, and put on his everyday things. You may be sure he made every possible haste to get back to his cousins. He wanted to talk over the whole wonderful adventure with them. He found them whispering in a corner. What is it, he asked? We're going to be even with old parrot-nose, said Edward, but you mustn't be in it, as we're going away, and you've got to stay here, and whatever we decide to do you'll get the blame of it. I don't see, said Richard. Why shouldn't I have a hand in what I've wanted to do these four years? He had not known that he had known the tutor for four years, but as he said the words he felt that they were true. There is a reason, said Edward. You go to bed, Richard. Not me, said Dickie, of Deatford Firmly. If we tell you, said Alfreda, explaining affectionately, you won't believe us. You might at least, said Richard Arden, catching desperately at the grand manner that seemed to suit these times of rough and sword and cloak and conspiracy. You might at least make a trial. Very well I will, said Alfreda abruptly. No, Edward, he has the right to hear. He's one of us. He won't give us away. Will you, Dickie, dear? You know I won't, Dickie assured her. Well, then, said Alfreda slowly. We are. You listen hard and believe with both hands, and all your might, or you won't be able to believe at all. We are not what we seem, Edward and I. We don't really belong here at all. I don't know what's become of the real Alfreda and Edward who belong in this time. Haven't we seemed odd to you at all? Different I mean, from the Edward and Alfreda you've been used to? The remembrance of the stopped clock feeling came strongly on Dickie, and he nodded. Well, that's because we're not them. We don't belong here. We belong three hundred years later in history. Sadly we've got a charm, because in our time Edward is Lord Arden, and there's a white mole who helps us, and we can go anywhere in history we like. Not quite, said Edward. No, but there are chests of different clothes, and whatever clothes we put on we come to that time in history. I know it sounds like silly untruths, she added rather sadly, and I knew you wouldn't believe it, but it is true. And now we're going back to our times. Queen Alexandra, you know, and King Edward VII and Electric Light and Motors and 1908? Don't try to believe if it hurts you, Dickie dear. I know it's most awfully rum, but it's the real true truth. Edward said nothing. Had never thought it possible that he was the only one to whom things like this happened. You don't believe it, said Edward complacently. I knew you wouldn't. Dickie felt a swimming sensation. It was impossible that this wonderful change should happen to anyone besides himself. This just meant that the whole thing was a dream, and he said nothing. Never mind, said Elfride and comforting tones. Don't try to believe it. I know you can't. Forget it, or pretend we were just kidding you. Well, it doesn't matter, Edward said. What can we do to pay out old parrot-nose? Then Richard found a voice and words. I don't like it, he said. It's never been like this before. It makes it seem not real. It's only a dream, really, I suppose, and I'd got to believe that it was really real. I don't understand a word you're saying, said Edward, and darting to a corner produced a photographic camera of the kind called brownie. Look here, he said. You've never seen anything like this before. This comes from the times we belong to. Richard knew it well. A boy at school had had one. And he had borrowed it once, and the assistant master had had a larger one of the same kind. It was horrible to him the intrusion of the scientific attainments of the ugly times in which he was born into the beautiful times that he had grown to love. Oh, stow it, he said. I know all. It's all a silly dream, but it's not worthwhile to pretend I don't know a Kodak when I see it. That's a brownie. If you've dreamed about our time, said Elfride, did you ever dream of fire carriages and fire boats, and Richard explained that he was not a baby, that he knew all about railways and steamboats and the triumphs of civilization, and added that Kent made six-fifteen against Derbyshire last Thursday. Edward and Elfride began to ask questions. Dicky was much too full of his own questioning to answer theirs. I shan't tell you anything more, he said, but I'll help you get even with old parrot nose, and suggested shoveling the snow off the roof into the room of that dismal tyrant through the skylight conveniently lighting it. But Edward wanted that written down about Kent and Derbyshire, so that they might see when they got back to their own times whether it was true. And Dicky found he had a bit of paper in his doublet on which to write it. It was a bill. He had had it in his hand when he made the magic moon-seed pattern, and it unaccountably came with him. It was a bill for three ships' guns and compasses and six flags which Mr. Beale had bought for him in London for the fitting out of a little ship he had made to order for the small son of the amiable pawnbroker. He scribbled on the back of this bill, gave it to Edward, and then they all went out on the roof and shoveled snow in on to Mr. Parados. When he came out on the roof very soon and angry they slipped round the chimney stacks and threw the trap-door and left him up on the roof in the snow and shut the trap-door and hasped it. Section 13 of Harding's Luck This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Liam Neely. Harding's Luck by Edith Nesbitt, Chapter 7, Part 2. And then the nurse caught them, and Richard was sent to bed, but he did not go. There was no sleep in that house that night. Sleepiness filled it like a thick fog. He put out his rush-light and stayed quiet for a little while, but presently it was impossible to stay quiet another moment. So very softly and carefully he crept out and hid behind a tall press at the end of the passage. He felt that strange things were happening in the house, and that he must know what they were. Presently there were voices below, voices coming up the stairs, the nurse's voice, his cousin's, and another voice. Where had he heard that other voice? The stopped-clock feeling was thick about him as he realized that this was one of the voices that he had heard that night of the first magic, the voice that had said, He is more yours than mine. The light the nurse carried gleamed and disappeared up the second flight of stairs. He followed. He had to follow. He could not be left out of this, the most mysterious of all the happenings that had so wonderfully come to him. He saw, when he reached the upper landing, that the others were by the window, and that the window was open. A keen wind rushed through it, and by the blown candle's light he could see snowflakes whirled into the house through the window's dark, star-studded square. There was whispering going on. He heard her words, here, so, jump! And the little figure, Edward it must be, no, Elfride, climbed up onto the window ledge, and jumped out. Out of the third-floor window, undoubtedly jumped. Heather followed it. It was Edward. It is a dream, said Dickie to himself, but if they've been made to jump out, to punish them for getting even with old parrot-nose or anything, I'll jump, too. He rushed past the nurse, past her voice, and the other voice that was talking with hers, made one bound to the window, set his knee upon it, stood up, and jumped, and he heard, as his knee touched the icy window-sil, the strange voice say, another. And then he was in the air, falling, falling. I shall wake when I reach the ground, Dickie told himself, and then I shall know it's only a dream, a silly dream. But he never reached the ground. He had not fallen a couple of yards before he was caught by something soft, as heaped feathers or drifted snow. It moved and shifted under him, took shape. It was a chair, no, a carriage. And there were reins in his hand, white reins, and a horse, no, a swan with wide white wings. He grasped the reins, and guided the strange steed to a low swoop that should bring him near the flare of torches in the street, outside the great front door. And as the swan laid its long-necked low in downward flight, he saw his cousins, in a carriage like his own, rise into the sky and sail away towards the south. Quite without meaning to do it, he pulled on the reins, the swan rose, he pulled again, and the carriage stopped at the landing-window. Hands dragged him in, the old nurse's hands, the swan glided away between the snow and stars, and on the landing, inside the open window, the nurse held him fast in her arms. "'My lamp,' she said, my dear, foolish, brave lamb!' Dickie was pulling himself together. "'If it's a dream,' he said slowly, "'I've had enough. I want to wake up. If it's real, real with magic in it, you've got to explain it all to me, every bit. I can't go on like this. It's not fair.' "'Oh, tell him and have done,' said the voice that had begun all the magic, and it seemed to him that something small and white slid along the wainscote of the corridor, and vanished quite suddenly, just as a candle-flame does when you blow the candle out. "'I will,' said the nurse. "'Come, love, I will tell you everything.' She took him down into a warm, curtained room, blew to flame the gray ashes on the open hearth, gave him elder wine to drink, hot and spiced, and, kneeling before him, rubbing his cold bare feet, she told him. "'There are certain children, born now and then, it does not often happen, but now and then it does, children who are not bound by time as other people are, and if the right bit of magic comes their way, those children have the power to go back and forth in time just as other children go back and forth in space, the space of a room, a playing field, or a garden alley. Often children lose this power when they are quite young. Sometimes it comes to them gradually, so that they hardly know when it begins and leaves them as gradually, like a dream when you wake and stretch yourself. Sometimes it comes by the saying of a charm. That is how Edred and Delfrida found it. They came from the time that you were born in, and they have been living in this time with you, and now they have gone back to their own time. Didn't you notice any difference in them from what they were at Datford? "'I should think I did,' said Dicky, at least it wasn't that I noticed any difference so much as that I felt something queer. I couldn't understand it. It felt stuffy as if something were going to burst. That was because they were not the cousins you knew at Datford. But where have the real cousins I knew at Datford been then all this time, while those other kids were here pretending to be them?' Dicky asked. Oh, they were somewhere else. In Julius Caesar's time to be exact, but they don't know it, and they never will know it. They haven't the charm. To them it will be like a dream that they have forgotten. The swans and the carriages and the voice and jumping out of the window, Dicky urged. The swans were white magic. The white moldy-warp of Arden did all that. And she told him about the white moldy-warp of Arden, and how it was the badge of Arden's house, its picture being engraved on Tinkler, and how it had done all sorts of magic for Edred and Alfreda, and would do still more. Dicky and the nurse sat most of the night, talking by the replenished fire, for the tales seemed endless. Dicky learned that the Edred and Alfreda, who belonged to his own times, had a father who was supposed to be dead. I am forbidden to tell them, said the nurse, but thou canst help them, and shout. I should like that, said Dicky, but can't I see the white moldy-warp? I dare not, even I dare not call it again, to-night, the nurse owned. But maybe I will teach thee a little spell to bring it on another day. It is an angry little beast at times, but kindly and hard-working. Then Dicky told her about the beginnings of the magic, and how he had heard two voices, one of them the moldy-warp's. There are three white moldy-warp's friends to thy house, she told him, the moldy-warp, who is the badge, and the moldy-warp, who is the crest, and the great moldy-warp, who sits on the green and white-checkered field of the ardent shield of arms. It was the first two who talked of thee. And how can I find my cousins, and help them find their father? Lay out the moon-seeds and the other charms, and wish to be where they are going. Then thou canst speak with them, wish to be there a week before they come, that thou mayst know the place and the folk. Now, Dicky asked, but not eagerly, for he was very tired. Not now, my lamb, she said, and so at last Dicky went to bed, his weary brain full of new things, more dreamlike than any dreams he had ever had. After this he talked with the nurse every day, and learned more and more wonders, of which there is no time now for me to tell you. But they are all written in the book of the House of Arden. In that book, too, it is written how Dicky went back from the first James' time to the time of the Eighth Henry, and took part in the merry country life of those days, and there found the old nurse herself, Edward and Alfrida, and helped them to recover their father from a far country. There also you may read of the marvels of the white clock, and the cliff that none could climb, and the children who were white cats, and the moldy warp who became as big as a polar bear with other wonders. And when all this was over, Alfrida and Edward wanted Dicky to come back with them to their own time, but he would not. He went back instead to the time he loved, when James the First was king, and when he woke in the little panelled room, it seemed to him that all this was only dreams and fancies. In the course of this adventure he met the white moldy warp, and it was just a white mole, very funny and rather self-important. The second moldy warp he had not yet met. I have told you all these things very shortly, because they were so dreamlike to Dicky, and not at all real like the double life he had been leading. That always happens, said the nurse. If you stumble into someone else's magic, it never feels real. But if you bring them into yours, it's quite another pair of sleeves. Those children can't get any more magic of their own now, but you could take them into yours. Only for that you'd have to meet them in your own time that you were born in, and you'll have to wait till its summer, because that's where they are now. They're seven months ahead of you in your own time. But, said Dicky, very much bewildered, as I am myself, and as I am afraid you too must be, if they're seven months ahead, won't they always be seven months ahead? Oddsbodykins, said the nurse impatiently. How often am I to tell you that there's no such thing as time, but their seasons and the season they'll come out of was summer, and the season you'll go back to is autumn, so you must live the seven months in their time, and then it'll be summer, and you'll meet them. And what about Lord Arden in the tower? Will he be beheaded for treason? Dicky asked. Oh, that's part of their magic. It isn't in your magic at all. Lord Arden will be safe enough, and now, my lamb, I have more to tell thee, but come into thy paneled chamber, where thy tutor cannot eavesdrop and betray us, and have thee given over to him holy, and me burned for a witch. These terrible words kept Dicky silent till he and the nurse were safe in his room, and then he said, Come with me to my time, nurse. They don't burn people for witches there. No, said the nurse, but they let them live such lives in their ugly towns that my life here, with all its risks, is far better worth living. Thou knowest how folk live in Deatford in thy time, how all the green trees are gone, and good work is gone, and people do bad work for just so much as will keep together their worn bodies and desolate souls. And sometimes they starve to death, and they won't burn me if thou'dt keep a still tongue. Now, listen, she sat down on the edge of the bed, and Dicky cuddled up against her stiff bodies. Edward and Alfrida first went into the past to look for treasure. It is a treasure buried in Arden Castle by the sea, which is their home. They want the treasure to restore the splendor of the old castle, which in your time is fallen into ruin and decay, and to mend the houses of the tenants, and to do good to the poor and needy. But you know that now they have used their magic to get back their father, and can no longer use it for treasure. But your magic will hold, and if you lay out your moon-seeds round them, in the old shape, and stand with them in the midst, holding your tinkler and your white seal, you will all go withersoever you choose. I shall choose to go straight to the treasure, of course, said practical Dicky, swinging his feet in their roseted shoes. Thou art thou canst not. Thou canst only choose some year in the past, any year. Go into it, and then seek for the treasure there, and then. I'll do it, Dicky said, and then I may come back to you, may and I. If thou art not needed elsewhere, the artens stay where duty binds them, and go where duty calls. But I'm not an arten there, said Dicky sadly. Thou art Richard arten there as here, she said. Thy grandfather's name got changed by breathing hard on it, from arten to arten, and that again to harding. Thus names are changed ever and again. And Dicky of Detford has the honour of the house of arten to uphold, here as there, then as now. I shall call myself arten when I go back, said Dicky proudly. Not yet, she said, wait. If you say so, said Dicky, rather discontentedly. The time is not ripe for thee to take up all thine honours there, she said, and now, dear lamb, since thy tutor is imagining unkind things in his heart for thee, go quickly, set out thy moon-seeds, and, when thou hearest the voices, say, I would see both mouldy warps, and thou shalt see them both. Thank you, said Dicky, I do want to see them both. See them, he did, in a blue grey mist in which he could feel nothing solid, not even the ground under his feet, or the touch of his clenched fingers against his palms. They were very white, the mouldy warps, outlined distinctly against the grey blueness, and the mouldy warp he had seen in that wonderful adventure in the far country smiled, as well as a mole-can, and said, Thou art fair sprig of the old tree, Master Dicky, so he be, in the thick speech of the peasant people round about Talbot House, where Dicky had once been a little burglar. He is indeed a worthy scion of the great house we serve, said the other mouldy warp, with precise and gentle utterance, as mouldier warp to the ardents, I can but own that I am proud of him. The mouldier warp had, as well as a gentle voice, a finer nose than the mouldy warp. His fur was more even, and his claws sharper. A, you be a gentleman, you be, said the mouldy warp. So, Z, so there's two of ye, sure enough. It was very odd to see and hear these white moles talking like real people, and looking like figures on a magic lantern screen. But Dicky did not enjoy it as much as perhaps you or I would have done. It was not his pet kind of magic. He liked the good, straightforward, old-fashioned kind of magic that he was accustomed to. The kind that just took you out of one life into another life, and made both lives as real one as the other. Still, one must always be polite, so he said, I'm very glad to see you both. There's pretty manners, the mouldy warp said. The pleasure's ours, said the mouldier warp instantly. Dicky could not help seeing that both these old creatures were extremely pleased with him. When shall I see the other mouldy warp? he asked, to keep up the conversation, the one on our shield of arms. You mean the mouldiest warp, said the mouldier, as I will now call him for short. You will not see him until the end of the magic. He is very great. I work the magic of space. My brother here works the magic of time, and the great mouldiest warp controls us and many things beside. You must only call on him when you wish to end our magics, and to work a magic greater than ours. What could be greater? Dicky asked, and both the creatures looked very pleased. He is a worthier ardent than those little black and white chits of thine, the mouldier said to the mouldy, which is what, to save time, we will now call the mouldy warp. And so should he be, and so should be, said the mouldy shortly. All's for the best, and the ends to come. Where do you want to go, my lord? I'm not my lord. I'm only Richard Arton, said Dicky, and I want to go back to Mr. Beal and stay with him for seven months, and then to find my cousins. Back thou goest, then, said the mouldy. That part's easy. And for the second half of thy wish no magic is needed, but the magic of steadfast heart and the patient purpose, and these thou hast, without any helping or giving of ours, said the courtly mouldier warp. They waved their white paws on the grey-blue curtain of mist, and, behold, they were not there any more. And the blue-grey mist was only the night's darkness turning to dawn, and Dicky was able again to feel solid things—the floor under him, his hand on the sharp edge of the armchair, and the soft breathing, comfortable weight of true, asleep against his knee. He moved, the dog awoke, and Dicky felt its soft nose nuzzled into his hand. And now, for seven months' work, and not one good dream, said Dicky. Got up, put Tinkler and the seal and the moon-seeds into a very safe place, and crept back to bed. He felt rather heroic. He did not want the treasure. It was not for him. He was going to help Edward and Alfreda to get it. He did not want the life at Lavender Terrace. He was going to help Mr. Beale to live it. So let him feel a little bit of a hero, since that was what indeed he was, even though, of course, all right-minded children are modest and humble and fully sensible of their own intense unimportance, no matter how heroically they may happen to be behaving. Please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Katine. In Debtford the seven months had almost gone by. Dicky had worked much, learned much, and earned much. Mr. Beale, a figure of cleanly habit and increasing steadiness, seemed like a plant growing quickly towards the sun of respectability, or a lighthouse rising bright and important out of a swirling sea of dogs. For the dog trade prospered exceedingly, and Mr. Beale had grown knowing in thorough breeds and the price bench, had learned all about distemper and doggy fits, and when you should give an ailing dog salvo latile and when you should merely give it less to eat. And the money in the bank grew till, so to speak, burst the bankbook and had to be allowed to overflow into a vast sea called Consoles. The dogs also grew in numbers as well as in size, and the neighbours who had borne a good deal very patiently began, as Mr. Beale said, to pass remarks. It ain't so much the little ones they jib at, said Mr. Beale, taking his pipe out of his mouth and stretching his legs in the backyard, though to my mind they yaps far more aggravating. It's the Cockerspanel and the Great Danes upset him. The Cockerspanel has got rather a persevering box at Dickey, looking up at the creeping Jenny in the windowboxes. No flowers would grow in the garden, now trampled hard by the India robbersole feet of many dogs, but Dickey did his best with windowboxes, and every window was underlined by a bright dash of colour. Creeping Jenny, Brompton stocks, stonecrop and late tulips, and all bought from the barrows in the High Street, made a brave show. I don't say as they're acting unnaprilly in talking about the police, so long as they don't do no more than talk, said Beale, with studied fairness and moderation. What I do say is, I wish we had more elbow-room form. And as for exercising up them all every day, like the books say, well I was one pair of ants to do it, let alone legs, and you in another line of business, and not able to give your time to them. I wish we had a bigger place, too, said Dickey. We could afford one now. Not but what I should be sorry to leave the old place, too. We've had some good times here in our time, father, aimed us. He sighed, with the air of an old man looking back on the long ago days of youth. You laid to it, we asked, said Mr. Beale, but this year backyard it aimed a place where dogs can what you call exercise. Not to call it exercise. Now is it? Well, then, said Dickey, let's get a move on us. Ah, said Mr. Beale, laying his pipe on his knee. Now you're talking. Get a move on us. That's what I hoped you'd say. Remember what I said to you in the wintertime, that night Mr. Fulow looked in for his bit of rent, about me getting off the fidgets in my legs? And I says, why not take to the road a bit now and again? And you says, we'll see about that come summer. And ear is come summer. What if we was to take the road a bit, mate, where there's room to stretch a chap's leg without kicking a dog or knocking the crockery over? There's the old pram upstairs in the back room, as lively as ever she was, only once a little of paint to be fit for a duke she does. And ear's me, and ear's you, and ear's the pick of the dogs. Think of it, matey. The bed with the green curtains, and the good smell of the herrings you toast yourself, and the fire you makes out of sticks, and the little starses are coming out and winking at you, and also quiet, a smoking your pipe till it falls out of your mouth with sleepiness, and no fear setting the counter-pinifier. What you say, matey, eh? Dickie looked lovingly at the smart back of the little house, its crisp white muslin blinds, its glimpses of neat curtains, its flowers. And then another picture came to him. He saw the misty last light fainting beyond the great shoulders of the downs, and the little starses shining so bright and new through the branches of fir trees that interlaced above a sweet-sanded bed of soft fallen brown pine needles. What say, mate? Mr. Beale repeated, and Dickie answered, Soonest ever your likes what I say, and what I say is, the sooner the better. Having made up his mind to go, Mr. Beale at once found a dozen reasons why he could not leave home, and all the reasons were forefooted and wagged loving tales at him. He was anxious, in fact, about the dogs. Could he really trust Amelia? Don't know who you can trust, then said Amelia, tossing a stillhandsome head. Anybody'd think that dogs was babbies to hear you. So they are, to me, as precious as anyway. Look here, you just come and live here, Amelia, see? And we'll give you five bob a week, and the nipper, he shall write it all down in lead pencil on a bitter paper for you, what there to have to eat and about their physique and which of them to have what. This took some time to settle, and some more time to write down. And then, when the lick of the paint was nearly dry on the perambulator, and all their shirts and socks were washed and mended and lying on the kitchen window ledge, ready for packing. What did Mr. Beale do but go out one morning and come back with a perfectly strange dachshund? And I can't go and leave the little beast till he knows himself a bit in his new place, said Mr. Beale, and have him bolten off gracious nosewear and being pinched or carted off to the dog's home, or that. Can I now? The new dog was very long, very brown, very friendly and charming. When it had had its supper it wagged its tail, turned a clear and gentle eye on Dickie, and without any warning stood on its head. Well, said Mr. Beale, if there ain't money in that beast, a trick dog he is, he's worth what I give for him, so he is, knows more tricks than that here I'll be bound. He did. He was a singularly well educated dog. Next morning Mr. Beale coming downstairs was just in time to bang the front door in the face of Amelia coming in, pale laden from doing the steps, and this to prevent the flight of the new dog. The door of one of the dog-rooms was open and a fringe of inquisitive dogs ornamented the passage. What you opened that door at all for, Mr. Beale asked Amelia. I didn't, she said, and stuck to it. That afternoon, Beale, smoking in the garden, got up, as he often did, to look through the window at the dogs. He gazed a moment, muttered something, and made one jump to the back door. It was closed. Amelia was giving the scullery floor a thorough scrub over, and had fastened the door to avoid having it opened with suddenness against her steaming pale, or her crouching form. But Mr. Beale got in at the back door and out at the front, just in time to see the dachshund disappearing at full speed, like a bit of brown toffee stick, as he said, round the end of the street. They never saw that dog again. Trained to it, Mr. Beale used to say sadly, whenever he told the story, Trained to it from a pup. You may lay your life. I see him as plain as I see you. He listens, and he looks, and he doesn't ear nor see nobody, and he ups on his hind legs and turns the handle with his little twisty front pauses, clever as a monkey, and how he goes like a harrow in a bow. Trained to it, you see. I bet his master would taught him that, sold him time and again, making a good figure every time, for he was a handsome dog as ever I see. Trained the dog to open the door and bunk ohm, see. Clever, I call it. It's a mean chick, said Dickie, when Beale told him of the loss of the dog. That's what I call it. I'm sorry you've lost the dog. I ain't exactly pleased myself, said Beale, but no use crying over broken glass. It's the cleverness, I think, of most, he said admiringly. Now I'd never a thought of a thing like that myself, not if I'd lived to a hundred so I wouldn't. You might have, he told Dickie it letteringly, but I wouldn't myself. We don't need to, said Dickie hastily. We earns our livings. We don't need to cheat to get our livings. No, no, dear boys, said Mr. Beale, more hastily still. Course we don't. That's just what I'm saying, ain't it? We shouldn't ever have thought of that. No need to, as you say. The cleverness of it. This admiration of the cleverness, by which he himself had been cheated, said Dickie thinking. He said, very gently and quietly, after a little pause. This year walking, Tower of Ours. We pays our own way. No caging. I should hope you know me better than that, said Beale, virtuously. Not a patter have I done since I'd done the rally and started in the dog-line. Nor yet no dealings with that red-headed chap what I never see. Now is it likely, Beale asked reproachfully, I should oak-wear a cut above a low chap like what he is. The prams dry as a bone and shiny as your at, and will start the first thing in the morning. And in the early morning, which is fresh and sweet, even in Deptford, they bade farewell to Amelia and the dogs and set out. Amelia watched them down the street and waved a farewell as they turned the corner. It'll be a bit lonesome, she said. One thing, I shan't be burgled with all them dogs in the house. The voices of the dogs as she went in and shut the door seemed to assure her that she would not even be so very lonely. And now they were really on the road, and they were going to Arden. To that place by the sea where Dickie's uncle, in the other life, had a castle, and where Dickie was to meet his cousins after his seven months of waiting. You may think that Dickie would be very excited by the thought of meeting. In this worker-day, nowadays world, the children with whom he had had such wonderful adventures in the other world, the dream world, too excited perhaps to feel really interested in the little everyday happenings of the road. But this was not so. The present was, after all, the real thing. The dreams could wait. The knowledge that they were there, waiting, made all the ordinary things more beautiful and more interesting. The feel of the soft dust underfoot, the bright dewy grass and clover by the wayside, the lessening of houses and the growing whiteness of field and pasture, all contended and delighted Dickie. He felt, to the full, all the joy that Mr. Beale felt in oofing it, and when, as the sun was sinking, they overtook a bent, slow-going figure, it was with a thrill of real pleasure that Dickie recognized the woman who had given him the blue ribbon for true. True himself, now grown large and thick of coat, seemed to recognize a friend. Gamble round her dreadful boots, sniffed at her withered hand. Give her a lift with her basket-chalice, Dickie whispered to Mr. Beale and climbed out of the perambulator. I can make shift to do this last piece. So the three went on together in friendly silence. As they neared Orpington, the woman said, Our roads part here, and thank you kindly. A kindness is never wasted, so they say. That ain't nothing, said Beale. Besides, there's the blue ribbon. That the dog, the woman asked, same old dog, said Beale with pride. A pretty beast, she said. Well, so long. She looked back to smile and nod to them when she had taken her basket and the turning to the right, and Dickie suddenly stiffened all over, as a pointer does when it sees a partridge. I say, he cried, You're the nurse. I've nursed a many in my time, she called back. But in the dream, you know. Dreams is queer, things, said the woman, and, she added, least said as soon as mended. But, said Dickie, keep your eyes open and your mouth shut, said good motto, said she, nodded again and turned resolutely away. Not very civil, I don't think, said Beale, considering. Oh, she's all right, said Dickie, wondering very much, and very anxious that Beale should not wander. May I ride in the pram-farver? My foot's a bit blistered, I think. We ain't done so much walking lately, everse. Ain't tired in yourself, are you, Mr. Beale asked, because there's a place called Chevering Park, pretty as a picture. I thought we might lay out there. I'm a bit odd in the oof myself, but I can stick it if you can. Dickie could, and when they made their evening camp in a deep gully soft with beech leaves, and he looked out over the ridge, cautiously because of keepers. At the smoothness of a mighty slope, green-grey in the dusk, where rabbits frisked and played, he was glad that he had not yielded to his tiredness and stopped to rest the night anywhere else. Chevering Park is a very beautiful place, I would have you to know. And the travellers were lucky. The dogs were good and quiet, and note-keeper disturbed their rest or their masters. Dickie slept with true in his arms, and it was like a draught of soft magic elixir, to lie once more in the still, cool night, and look up at the stars through the trees. I can't think why they ever invented houses, he said, and then he fell asleep. By short stages, enjoying every step of every day's journey, they went slowly, and at their ease, through the garden land of Kent. Dickie loved every minute of it, every leaf in the hedge, every blade of grass by the roadside, and most of all, he loved the quiet nights when he fell asleep under the stars with true in his arms. It was all good, all, and it was worth waiting and working for seven long months to feel the thrill that Dickie felt when Beale, as they topped a ridge of the great south downs, said suddenly. There's the sea, and a dozen yards further on. There's Arden Castle. There it lay, gray and green, with its old stones and ivy, the same castle which Dickie had seen on the day when they lay among the first bushes and waited to burgle Talbot Court. There were red roofs at one side of the castle where a house had been built among the ruins. As they drew nearer and looked down at Arden Castle, Dickie saw two little figures in its green courtyard and wondered whether they could possibly be Edward and Elfrida, the little cousins whom he had met in King James the first time, and who, the nurse said, really belonged to the times of King Edward VII or nowadays, just as he did himself. It seemed as though it could hardly be true, but if it were true, how splendid! What games he and they could have, and what a play place it was that spread out before him, green and glorious, with the sea on one side and the downs on the other, and in the middle the ruins of Arden Castle. But as they went on through the first bushes, Dickie perceived that Mr. Beale was growing more and more silent and uneasy. What's up, Dickie asked at last. Out with it, Farber. It ain't nothing, said Mr. Beale. You ain't afraid those Talbots will know you again. Not much, I ain't. They never see my face, and I hadn't appeared that time like what I've got now. Well, then said Dickie. Well, if you must have it, said Beale, we're getting very near my old dad's place, and I can't make me mind up. I thought we were settled we'd go to see him. I don't know if he's under the daisies, I shan't like it. I tell you straight, I shan't like it. But where long lived, Stark? Perhaps he's all right. I don't know. Shall I go up by myself to where he lives, and see if he's all right? Not much, said Mr. Beale. If I goes, I goes, and if I stays away, I stays away. It's just the not being able to make me mind up. If he's there, said Dickie, don't you think you ought to go, just on the chance of him being there and wanting you? If you come to odds, said Beale, I ought to go home any time this twenty year. Only I ain't, see? Well, said Dickie, it's your look out. I know what I should do if it was me. Remembrance showed him the father who had leaned on his shoulder as they walked about the winding walks of the pleasant garden in Old Deptford. The father who had given him the little horse and insisted that his twenty gold pieces should be spent as he chose. I don't know, said Beale. What do you think, eh, Maddie? I think let's, said Dickie. I lay if he's alive it would be as good as three Sundays in the week to him to see you. He was his little boy once, wasn't you? I, said Beale, he was wagon ears made to one of Lord Arden's men. He used to ride me on the big cart horses. He was a fine set up chap. To hear the name of Arden on Beale's lips gave Dickie a very odd, half pleasant, half frightened feeling. It seemed to bring certain things very near. Let's, he said again. I'll ride, said Beale. Only if it all goes wrong it ain't my fault. And there used to be a footpath a bit further on. You cut through the copes and cater along the eleven acre matter and bear along to the left by the edge, and it brings you out under Arden Knoll, where my old man's place is. So they cut and catered and bore along and came out under Arden Knoll, and there was a cottage with a very neat garden full of gay flowers and a brick pathway leading from the wooden gate to the front door. And by the front door sat an old man in a Windsor chair with a brown spaniel at his feet and a bird in a wicker cage above his head, and he was nodding, for it was a hot day and he was an old man and tired. Swelp me, I can't do it, whispered Beale. I'll walk on a bit. You just asked for a drink and sort of see how the land lays. It might turn him up seeing me so sudden, good old dad. He walked quickly on, and Dickie was left standing by the gate. Then the brown spaniel became aware of true and barked, and the old man said, down, trusty, in his sleep, and then woke up. His clear old eyes, said in many wrinkles, turned full on Dickie by the gate. May I have a drink of water, Dickie asked? Come in, said the old man. And Dickie lifted the latch of smooth, brown, sun-warmed iron and went up the brick path as the old man slowly turned himself about in the chair. Yonder's the well, he said. Draw up a bucket if thy leg'll let thee, poor little chap. I draw's water with my arms, not my legs, said Dickie cheerfully. There's a blue mug in the wash-house window-latch, said the old man. Fetch me a drop when you've had your drink, my lad. Of course, Dickie's manners were too good for him to drink first. He drew up the dripping oaken bucket from the cool darkness of the well, fetched the mug, and offered it, brimming to the old man. Then he drank, and looked at the garden, ablaze with flowers, blush roses and damask roses, and sweet Williams and candy-tuffed, white lilies and yellow lilies, pansies, larkspur, poppies, bergamot and sage. It was just like a play at the Greenwich Theatre, Dickie thought. He had seen a scene just like that, where the old man sat in the sun and the prodigal returned. Dickie would not have been surprised to see Beale run up the brick path and throw himself on his knees, exclaiming, Father, it is I, your erring but repentant son. Can you forgive me? If a lifetime of repentance can atone, and so on. If Dickie had been Beale, he would certainly have made the speech beginning, Father, it is I. But as he was only Dickie, he said. Your name's Beale, ain't it? It might be, old Beale, aloud. I seen your son in London. He told me about your garden. I should have thought, either forgot the garden, same as he's forgot me, said the old man. He ain't forgot you. Not he, said Dickie. He's come to see you, and he's waiting outside now to know if you'd like to see him. Then he oughta know better, said the old man, and shouted in a thin high voice, Jim, Jim, come along in this minute. Even then, Beale didn't act a bit like the prodigal in the play. He just unlatched the gate without looking at it. His hand had not forgotten the way of it for all it was so long since he had pressed through that gate. And he walked slowly and heavily up the path and said, Hello, Dad, how goes it? The old man looked at him with his eyes half shut and said, Why, it is, James, so it is, as if he had expected it to be someone quite different. And they shook hands, and then Beale said, The garden's looking well, and the old man owned that the garden would do all right if it wasn't for the snails. That was all Dickie heard, for he thought it polite to go away. Of course they could not be really affectionate with a stranger about, so he shouted from the gate something about, back presently, and went off along the cart track towards Arden Castle, and looked at it quite closely. It was the most beautiful and interesting thing he had ever seen, but he did not see the children. When he went back the old man was cooking steak over the kitchen fire, and Beale was at the sink straining summer cabbage in a colander, as though he had lived there all his life and never anywhere else. He was in his shirt sleeves too, and his coat and hat hung behind the back door. So then they had dinner, when the old man had sat down the frying-pan, expressly to shake hands with Dickie, saying, So this is the lad you told me about? Yes, yes. It was a very nice dinner, with cold gooseberry pastry as well as the steak and vegetables. The kitchen was pleasant and cozy, though rather dark on account of the white climbing rows that grew round the window. After dinner the men sat in the sun and smoked, and Dickie occupied himself in teaching the spaniel and true that neither of them was a dog who deserved to be growled at. Dickie had just thrown back his head in a laugh at true sulky face and stiffly planted paws, when he felt the old man's dry wrinkled hand under his chin. Let's have a look at you, he said, and peered closely at the child. Where'd you get that face, eh? What did you say your name was? Hardings, his name, said Beale. Dickie Harding. Dickie Arden, I should have said, if you'd asked me, said the old man. Seems to me it's a regular Arden face he's got. But my eyes ain't so good as what they was. What'd you say to stopping along of me a bit, my boy? There's room in the cottage for all five of us. My son James here tells me you've been as good as a son to him. I'd love it, said Dickie. So that was settled. There were two bedrooms for Beale and his father, and Dickie slept in a narrow, whitewashed slip of a room that had once been a larder. The brown spaniel, and true, slept on the rag hoth rug in the kitchen, and everything was as cozy as cozy could be. We can send for any of the dogs any minute if we feel we can't stick it without them, said Beale, smoking his pipe in the front garden. You mean to stay a long time, then, said Dickie? I don't know. You see, I was born in Bradere. The air tastes good, don't it, and the water is good. Didn't you notice that tea tasted quite different from what it does anywhere else? That's the soft water, that is. And the old chap. Yes, and there's one or two other things. Yes, I reckon us'll stop on ear a bit. And Dickie was very glad. For now he was near Arden castle, and could see it any time he chose to walk a couple of hundred yards and look down, and presently he would see Edward and Delfrida. Would they know him? That was the question. Would they remember that he and they had been cousins and friends when James I was king? End of Chapter 8 Recording by Katine