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

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.

“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.”

“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