Harding’s Luck, E. Nesbit [summer reads .TXT] 📗

not tramp the country for a month, at Dickie’s age, without learning something about seeds.

He got out the knife that should have cut the string of the basket in the train, opened it and cut the stalk of the moonflower, very carefully so that none of the seeds should be, and only a few were, lost. He crept into the house holding the stalk upright and steady as an acolyte carries a processional cross.

The house was quite dark now, but a street lamp threw its light into the front room, bare, empty, and dusty. There was a torn newspaper on the floor. He spread a sheet of it out, kneeled by it and shook the moonflower head over it. The seeds came rattling out⁠—dozens and dozens of them. They were bigger than sunflower seeds and flatter and rounder, and they shone like silver, or like the pods of the plant we call honesty.

“Oh, beautiful, beautiful!” said Dickie, letting the smooth shapes slide through his fingers. Have you ever played with mother-of-pearl card counters? The seeds of the moonflower were like those.

He pulled out Tinkler and the seal and laid them on the heap of seeds. And then knew quite suddenly that he was too tired to travel any further that night.

“I’ll doss here,” he said; “there’s plenty papers”⁠—he knew by experience that, as bedclothes, newspapers are warm, if noisy⁠—“and get on in the morning afore people’s up.”

He collected all the paper and straw⁠—there was a good deal littered about in the house⁠—and made a heap in the corner, out of the way of the window. He did not feel afraid of sleeping in an empty house, only very lordly and magnificent because he had a whole house to himself. The food still left in his pockets served for supper, and you could drink quite well at the washhouse tap by putting your head under and turning it on very slowly.

And for a final enjoyment he laid out his treasures on the newspaper⁠—Tinkler and the seal in the middle and the pearly counters arranged in patterns round them, circles and squares and oblongs. The seeds lay very flat and fitted close together. They were excellent for making patterns with. And presently he made, with triple lines of silvery seeds, a six-pointed star, something like this⁠—

with the rattle and the seal in the middle, and the light from the street lamp shone brightly on it all.

“That’s the prettiest of the lot,” said Dickie Harding, alone in the empty house.

And then the magic began.

IV Which Was the Dream?

The two crossed triangles of white seeds, in the midst Tinkler and the white seal, lay on the floor of the little empty house, grew dim and faint before Dickie’s eyes, and his eyes suddenly smarted and felt tired so that he was very glad to shut them. He had an absurd fancy that he could see, through his closed eyelids, something moving in the middle of the star that the two triangles made. But he knew that this must be nonsense, because, of course, you cannot see through your eyelids. His eyelids felt so heavy that he could not take the trouble to lift them even when a voice spoke quite near him. He had no doubt but that it was the policeman come to “take him up” for being in a house that was not his.

“Let him,” said Dickie to himself. He was too sleepy to be afraid.

But for a policeman, who is usually of quite a large pattern, the voice was unusually soft and small. It said briskly⁠—

“Now, then, where do you want to go to?”

“I ain’t particular,” said Dickie, who supposed himself to be listening to an offer of a choice of police-stations.

There were whispers⁠—two small and soft voices. They made a sleepy music.

“He’s more yours than mine,” said one.

“You’re more his than I am,” said the other.

“You’re older than I am,” said the first.

“You’re stronger than I am,” said the second.

“Let’s spin for it,” said the first voice, and there was a humming sound ending in a little tinkling fall.

“That settles it,” said the second voice⁠—“here?”

“And when?”

“Three’s a good number.”

Then everything was very quiet, and sleep wrapped Dickie like a soft cloak. When he awoke his eyelids no longer felt heavy, so he opened them. “That was a rum dream,” he told himself, as he blinked in broad daylight.

He lay in bed⁠—a big, strange bed⁠—in a room that he had never seen before. The windows were low and long, with small panes, and the light was broken by upright stone divisions. The floor was of dark wood, strewn strangely with flowers and green herbs, and the bed was a four-post bed like the one he had slept in at Talbot House; and in the green curtains was woven a white pattern, very like the thing that was engraved on Tinkler and on the white seal. On the coverlet lavender and other herbs were laid. And the wall was hung with pictures done in needlework⁠—tapestry, in fact, though Dickie did not know that this was its name. All the furniture was heavily built of wood heavily carved. An enormous dark cupboard or wardrobe loomed against one wall. High-backed chairs with tapestry seats were ranged in a row against another. The third wall was almost all window, and in the fourth wall the fireplace was set with a high-hooded chimney and wide, open hearth.

Near the bed stood a stool, or table, with cups and bottles on it, and on the necks of the bottles parchment labels were tied that stuck out stiffly. A stout woman in very full skirts sat in a large armchair at the foot of the bed. She wore a queer white cap, the like of which Dickie had never seen, and round her neck was a ruff which reminded him of the cut-paper frills in the ham and beef