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

short blinds everywhere else. I’ll go and get ’em while you clean the winders. That old shirt of mine. It won’t hang through another washing. Clean ’em with that.”

“You don’t give your orders, neither,” said Beale contentedly.

The curtains and a penn’orth of tacks, a hammer borrowed from a neighbor, and an hour’s cheerful work completed the fortification of the Englishman’s house against the inquisitiveness of passersby. But the landlord frowned anxiously as he went past the house.

“Don’t like all that white curtain,” he told himself; “not much be’ind it, if you ask me. People don’t go to that extreme in Nottingham lace 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 yer 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 ’ere garden’s in a poor state,” said Beale in a loud voice; “wants turning over’s what I think⁠—against the winter. I’ll get a spade and ’ave a turn at it this very day, so I will. This ’ere old artichook’s got some roots, I lay.”

The digging began at the fence and reached the moonflower, whose roots were indeed 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 had 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 and sighed, and opened them again and said⁠—

“Give you? They give you that. I don’t believe you.”

“You 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 ’em, though,” said Beale despondently. “We’d get lagged for a cert. They’d say we pinched ’em.”

“No, they won’t. ’Cause I’ve got a friend as’ll change ’em for me, and then we’ll ’ave new clobber and some more furniture, and a carpet and a crockery basin to wash our hands and faces in ’stead of that old tin thing. And a bath we’ll ’ave. And you shall buy some more pups. And I’ll get some proper carving tools. And our fortune’s made. See?”

“You nipper,” said Beale, slowly and fondly, “the best day’s work ever I done was when I took up with you. You’re straight, you are⁠—one of the best. Many’s the boy would ’ave done a bunk and took the shiners along with him. But 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 ’ave it all out, or bust. I didn’t never take you along of me ’cause I fancied you like what I said. I was just a-looking out for a nipper to shove through windows⁠—see?⁠—along of that redheaded chap what you never set 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 wrote on the sole of my boot. I’d bought that bit of paper and pencil a-purpose. There!”

“You ain’t done me no ’arm, anyway,” said Dickie.

“No⁠—I know I ain’t. ’Cause why? ’Cause I took to you the very first day. I allus 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 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 emprise. I mean,” he explained, noticing Mr. Beale’s open mouth and eyes more lobster-like than ever⁠—“I mean that’s all right, farver, and you see it don’t make any difference to