Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  “I’m not going to lend you any more, if that’s what you’re after,” said the Jew, who had already reproached himself for his confiding generosity.

  “It’s not that I’m after,” said Dickie, with dignity. “I wish to repay you.”

  “Got the money?” said the Jew, laughing not unkindly.

  “No,” said Dickie; “but I’ve got this.” He handed the little box across the counter.

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “I made it.”

  The pawnbroker laughed again. “Well, well, I’ll ask no questions and you’ll tell me no lies, eh?”

  “I shall certainly tell you no lies,” said Dickie, with the dignity of the dream boy who was not a cripple and was heir to a great and gentle name; “will you take it instead of the money?”

  The pawnbroker turned the box over in his hands, while kindness and honesty struggled fiercely within him against the habits of a business life. Dickie eyed the china vases and concertinas and teaspoons tied together in fan shape, and waited silently.

  “It’s worth more than what I lent you,” the man said at last with an effort; “and it isn’t every one who would own that, mind you.”

  “I know it isn’t,” said Dickie; “will you please take it to pay my debt to you, and if it is worth more, accept it as a grateful gift from one who is still gratefully your debtor.”

  “You’d make your fortune on the halls,” said the man, as Beale had said; “the way you talk beats everything. All serene. I’ll take the box in full discharge of your debt. But you might as well tell me where you got it.”

  “I made it,” said Dickie, and put his lips together very tightly.

  “You did — did you? Then I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you four bob for every one of them you make and bring to me. You might do different coats of arms — see?”

  “I was only taught to do one,” said Dickie.

  Just then a customer came in — a woman with her Sunday dress and a pair of sheets to pawn because her man was out of work and the children were hungry.

  “Run along, now,” said the Jew, “I’ve nothing more for you to-day.” Dickie flushed and went.

  Three days later the crutch clattered in at the pawnbroker’s door, and Dickie laid two more little boxes on the counter.

  “Here you are,” he said. The pawnbroker looked and exclaimed and questioned and wondered, and Dickie went away with eight silver shillings in his pocket, the first coins he had ever carried in his life. They seemed to have been coined in some fairy mint; they were so different from any other money he had ever handled.

  Mr. Beale, waiting for him by New Cross Station, put his empty pipe in his pocket and strolled down to meet him. Dickie drew him down a side street and held out the silver. “Two days’ work,” he said. “We ain’t no call to take the road ‘cept for a pleasure trip. I got a trade, I ‘ave. ‘Ow much a week’s four bob a day? Twenty-four bob I make it.”

  “Lor!” said Mr. Beale, with his mouth open.

  “Now I tell you what, you get ‘old of some more old sofy legs and a stone and a strap to sharpen my knife with. And there we are. Twenty-four shillings a week for a chap an’ ‘is nipper ain’t so dusty, farver, is it? I’ve thought it all up and settled it all out. So long as the weather holds we’ll sleep in the bed with the green curtains, and I’ll ‘ave a green wood for my workshop, and when the nights get cold we’ll rent a room of our very own and live like toffs, won’t us?”

  The child’s eyes were shining with excitement.

  “‘Pon my sam, I believe you like work,” said Mr. Beale in tones of intense astonishment.

  “I like it better’n cadgin’,” said Dickie.

  They did as Dickie had said, and for two days Mr. Beale was content to eat and doze and wake and watch Dickie’s busy fingers and eat and doze again. But on the third day he announced that he was getting the fidgets in his legs.

  “I must do a prowl,” he said; “I’ll be back afore sundown. Don’t you forget to eat your dinner when the sun comes level the top of that high tree. So long, matey.”

  Mr. Beale slouched off in the sunshine in his filthy old clothes, and Dickie was left to work alone in the green and golden wood. It was very still. Dickie hardly moved at all, and the chips that fell from his work fell more softly than the twigs and acorns that dropped now and then from some high bough. A goldfinch swung on a swaying hazel branch and looked at him with bright eyes, unafraid; a grass snake slid swiftly by — it was out on particular business of its own, so it was not afraid of Dickie nor he of it. A wood-pigeon swept rustling wings across the glade where he sat, and once a squirrel ran right along a bough to look down at him and chatter, thickening its tail as a cat does hers when she is angry.

  It was a long and very beautiful day, the first that Dickie had ever spent alone. He worked harder than ever, and when by the lessening light it was impossible to work any longer, he lay back against a tree root to rest his tired back and to gloat over the thought that he had made two boxes in one day — eight shillings — in one single day, eight splendid shillings.

  The sun was quite down before Mr. Beale returned. He looked unnaturally fat, and as he sat down on the moss something inside the front of his jacket moved and whined.

  “Oh! what is it?” Dickie asked, sitting up, alert in a moment; “not a dawg? Oh! farver, you don’t know how I’ve always wanted a dawg.”

  “Well, you’ve a-got yer want now, three times over, you ‘ave,” said Beale, and, unbuttoning his jacket, took out a double handful of soft, fluffy sprawling arms and legs and heads and tails — three little fat, white puppies.

  “Oh, the jolly little beasts!” said Dickie; “ain’t they fine? Where did you get them?”

  “They was give me,” said Mr. Beale, re-knotting his handkerchief, “by a lady in the country.”

  He fixed his eyes on the soft blue of the darkening sky.

  “Try another,” said Dickie calmly.

  “Ah! it ain’t no use trying to deceive the nipper — that sharp he is,” said Beale, with a mixture of pride and confusion. “Well, then, not to deceive you, mate, I bought ‘em.”

  “What with?” said Dickie, lightning quick.

  “With — with money, mate — with money, of course.”

  “How’d you get it?”

  No answer.

  “You didn’t pinch it?”

  “No — on my sacred sam, I didn’t,” said Beale eagerly; “pinching leads to trouble. I’ve ‘ad my lesson.”

  “You cadged it, then?” said Dickie.

  “Well,” said Beale sheepishly, “what if I did?”

  “You’ve spoiled everything,” said Dickie, furious, and he flung the two newly finished boxes violently to the ground, and sat frowning with eyes downcast.

  Beale, on all fours, retrieved the boxes.

  “Two,” he said, in awestruck tones; “there never was such a nipper!”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Dickie in a heartbroken voice, “you’ve spoiled everything, and you lie to me, too. It’s all spoiled. I wish I’d never come back outer the dream, so I do.”

  “Now lookee here,” said Beale sternly, “don’t you come this over us, ‘cause I won’t stand it, d’y ‘ear? Am I the master or is it you? D’ye think I’m going to put up with being bullied and druv by a little nipper like as I could lay out with one ‘and as easy as what I could one of them pups?” He moved his foot among the soft, strong little things that were uttering baby-growls and biting at his broken boot with their little white teeth.

  “Do,” said Dickie bitterly, “lay me out if you want to. I don’t care.”

  “Now, now, matey” — Beale’s tone changed suddenly to affectionate remonstrance—”I was only kiddin’. Don’t take it like that. You know I wouldn’t ‘urt a ‘air of yer ‘ed, so I wouldn’t.”

  “I wanted us to live honest by our work — we was doing it. And you’ve lowered us to the cadgin’ again. That’s what I can’t stick,” said Dickie.
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  “It wasn’t. I didn’t have to do a single bit of patter for it anyhow. It was a wedding, and I stopped to ‘ave a squint, and there’d been a water-cart as ‘ad stopped to ‘ave a squint too, and made a puddle as big as a tea-tray, and all the path wet. An’ the lady in her white, she looks at the path and the gent ‘e looks at ‘er white boots — an’ I off’s with me coat like that there Rally gent you yarned me about, and flops it down in the middle of the puddle, right in front of the gal. And she tips me a smile like a hangel and ‘olds out ‘er hand — in ‘er white glove and all — and yer know what my ‘ands is like, matey.”

  “‘AN’ I OFF’S WITH ME COAT, AND FLOPS IT DOWN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PUDDLE, RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE GAL’”

  “Yes,” said Dickie, “go on.”

  “And she just touched me ‘and and walks across me coat. And the people laughed and clapped — silly apes! And the gent ‘e tipped me a thick ‘un, and I spotted the pups a month ago, and I knew I could have ’em for five bob, so I got ‘em. And I’ll sell em for thribble the money, you see if I don’t. An’ I thought you’d be as pleased as pleased — me actin’ so silly, like as if I was one of them yarns o’ yourn an’ all. And then first minute I gets ‘ere, you sets on to me. But that’s always the way.”

  “Please, please forgive me, father,” said Dickie, very much ashamed of himself; “I am so sorry. And it was nice of you and I am pleased — and I do love the pups — and we won’t sell all three, will us? I would so like to have one. I’d call it ‘True.’ One of the dogs in my dream was called that. You do forgive me, don’t you, father?”

  “Oh! that’s all right,” said Beale.

  Next day again a little boy worked alone in a wood, and yet not alone, for a small pup sprawled and yapped and scrapped and grunted round him as he worked. No squirrels or birds came that day to lighten Dickie’s solitude, but True was more to him than many birds or squirrels. A woman they had overtaken on the road had given him a bit of blue ribbon for the puppy’s neck, in return for the lift which Mr. Beale had given her basket on the perambulator. She was selling ribbons and cottons and needles from door to door, and made a poor thing of it, she told them. “An’ my grandfather ‘e farmed ‘is own land in Sussex,” she told them, looking with bleared eyes across the fields.

  Dickie only made a box and a part of a box that day. And while he sat making it, far away in London a respectable-looking man was walking up and down Regent Street among the shoppers and the motors and carriages, with a fluffy little white dog under each arm. And he sold both the dogs.

  “One was a lady in a carriage,” he told Dickie later on. “Arst ‘er two thick ‘uns, I did. Never turned a hair, no more I didn’t. She didn’t care what its price was, bless you. Said it was a dinky darling and she wanted it. Gent said he’d get her plenty better. No — she wanted that. An’ she got it too. A fool and his money’s soon parted’s what I say. And t’other one I let ‘im go cheap, for fourteen bob, to a black clergyman — black as your hat he was, from foreign parts. So now we’re bloomin’ toffs, an’ I’ll get a pair of reach-me-downs this very bloomin’ night. And what price that there room you was talkin’ about?”

  It was the beginning of a new life. Dickie wrote out their accounts on a large flagstone near the horse trough by the “Chequers,” with a bit of billiard chalk that a man gave him.

  It was like this: —

  Got

  Box

  4

  Box

  4

  Box

  4

  Box

  4

  Dog

  40

  Dog

  14

  70

  Spent

  Dogs

  4

  Grub

  19

  Tram

  4

  Leg

  2

  29

  and he made out before he rubbed the chalk off the stone that the difference between twenty-nine shillings and seventy was about two pounds — and that was more than Dickie had ever had, or Beale either, for many a long year.

  Then Beale came, wiping his mouth, and they walked idly up the road. Lodgings. Or rather a lodging. A room. But when you have had what is called the key of the street for years enough, you hardly know where to look for the key of a room.

  “Where’d you like to be?” Beale asked anxiously. “You like country best, don’t yer?”

  “Yes,” said Dickie.

  “But in the winter-time?” Beale urged.

  “Well, town then,” said Dickie, who was trying to invent a box of a new and different shape to be carved next day.

  “I could keep a lookout for likely pups,” said Beale; “there’s a plenty here and there all about — and you with your boxes. We might go to three bob a week for the room.”

  “I’d like a ‘ouse with a garden,” said Dickie.

  “Go back to yer Talbots,” said Beale.

  “No — but look ‘ere,” said Dickie, “if we was to take a ‘ouse — just a little ‘ouse, and let half of it.”

  “We ain’t got no sticks to put in it.”

  “Ain’t there some way you get furniture without payin’ for it?”

  “‘Ire systim. But that’s for toffs on three quid a week, reg’lar wages. They wouldn’t look at us.”

  “We’ll get three quid right enough afore we done,” said Dickie firmly; “and if you want London, I’d like our old house because of the seeds I sowed in the garden; I lay they’ll keep on a-coming up, forever and ever. That’s what annuals means. The chap next door told me. It means flowers as comes up fresh every year. Let’s tramp up, and I’ll show it to you — where we used to live.”

  And when they had tramped up and Dickie had shown Mr. Beale the sad-faced little house, Mr. Beale owned that it would do ’em a fair treat.

  “But we must ‘ave some bits of sticks or else nobody won’t let us have no ‘ouses.”

  They flattened their noses against the front window. The newspapers and dirty sackings still lay scattered on the floor as they had fallen from Dickie when he had got up in the morning after the night when he had had The Dream.

  The sight pulled at Dickie’s heart-strings. He felt as a man might feel who beheld once more the seaport from which in old and beautiful days he had set sail for the shores of romance, the golden splendor of The Fortunate Islands.

  “I could doss ‘ere again,” he said wistfully; “it ‘ud save fourpence. Both ‘ouses both sides is empty. Nobody wouldn’t know.”

  “We don’t need to look to our fourpences so sharp’s all that,” said Beale.

  “I’d like to.”

  “Wonder you ain’t afeared.”

  “I’m used to it,” said Dickie; “it was our own ‘ouse, you see.”

  “You come along to yer supper,” said Beale; “don’t be so flash with yer own ‘ouses.”

  They had supper at a coffee-shop in the Broadway.

  “Two mugs, four billiard balls, and ‘arf a dozen door-steps,” was Mr. Beale’s order. You or I, more polite if less picturesque, would perhaps have said, “Two cups of tea, four eggs, and some thick bread and butter.” It was a pleasant meal. Only just at the end it turned into something quite different. The shop was one of those old-fashioned ones, divided by partitions like the stalls in a stable, and over the top of this partition there suddenly appeared a head.

  Dickie’s mug paused in air half-way to his mouth, which remained open.

  “What’s up?” Beale asked, trying to turn on the narrow seat and look up, which he couldn’t do.

  “It’s ‘im,” whispered Dickie, setting down the mug. “That red’eaded chap wot I never see.”

  And then the redheaded man came round the partition and sat down beside Beale and talked to him, and Dickie wished he wouldn’t. He heard little of the conversation; only “better luck next time” from the redheaded man, and “I don’t know as I’m taking any” from Beale, and at the parting the redheaded man saying, “I’ll doss
same shop as wot you do,” and Beale giving the name of the lodging-house where, on the way to the coffee-shop, Beale had left the perambulator and engaged their beds.

  “Tell you all about it in the morning” were the last words of the redheaded one as he slouched out, and Dickie and Beale were left to finish the door-steps and drink the cold tea that had slopped into their saucers.

  When they went out Dickie said —

  “What did he want, farver — that redheaded chap?”

  Beale did not at once answer.

  “I wouldn’t if I was you,” said Dickie, looking straight in front of him as they walked.

  “Wouldn’t what?”

  “Whatever he wants to.”

  “Why, I ain’t told you yet what he does want.”

  “‘E ain’t up to no good — I know that.”

  “‘E’s full of notions, that’s wot ‘e is,” said Beale. “If some of ‘is notions come out right ‘e’ll be a-ridin’ in ‘is own cart and ‘orse afore we know where we are — and us a-tramping in ‘is dust.”

  “Ridin’ in Black Maria, more like,” said Dickie.

  “Well, I ain’t askin’ you to do anything, am I?” said Beale.

  “No! — you ain’t. But whatever you’re in, I’m a-goin’ to be in, that’s all.”

  “Don’t you take on,” said Beale comfortably; “I ain’t said I’ll be in anything yet, ‘ave I? Let’s ‘ear what ‘e says in the morning. If ‘is lay ain’t a safe lay old Beale won’t be in it — you may lay to that.”

  “Don’t let’s,” said Dickie earnestly. “Look ‘ere, father, let us go, both two of us, and sleep in that there old ‘ouse of ours. I don’t want that red’eaded chap. He’ll spoil everything — I know ‘e will, just as we’re a-gettin’ along so straight and gay. Don’t let’s go to that there doss; let’s lay in the old ‘ouse.”

  “Ain’t I never to ‘ave never a word with nobody without it’s you?” said Beale, but not angrily.