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

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 am very glad to see you both.”

“There’s purty manners,” the Mouldiwarp said.

“The pleasure is ours,” said the Mouldierwarp instantly. Dickie could not help seeing that both these old creatures were extremely pleased with him.

“When shall I see the other Mouldiwarp?” he asked, to keep up the conversation⁠—“the one on our shield of arms?”

“You mean the Mouldiestwarp?” said the Mouldier, as I will now call him for short; “you will not see him till 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 Mouldiestwarp 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?” Dickie asked, and both the creatures looked very pleased.

“He is a worthier Arden 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 Mouldiwarp).

“An’ so should be⁠—an’ so should be,” said the Mouldy shortly. “All’s for the best, and the end’s to come. Where’d ye want to go, my lord?”

“I’m not ‘my lord’; I’m only Richard Arden,” said Dickie, “and I want to go back to Mr. Beale and stay with him for seven months, and then to find my cousins.”

“Back thou goes 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 Mouldierwarp.

They waved their white paws on the gray-blue curtain of mist, and behold they were not there any more, and the blue-gray mist was only the night’s darkness turning to dawn, and Dickie 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 Dickie felt its soft nose nuzzled into his hand.

“And now for seven months’ work, and not one good dream,” said Dickie, got up, put Tinkler and the seal and the moonseeds 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 Edred and Elfrida 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.

VIII Going Home

In Deptford the seven months had almost gone by; Dickie 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 thoroughbreeds and the prize bench, had learned all about distemper and doggy fits, and when you should give an ailing dog sal-volatile and when you should merely give it less to eat. And the money in the bank grew till it, so to speak, burst the bankbook, and had to be allowed to overflow into a vast sea called Consols.

The dogs also grew, in numbers as well as in size, and the neighbors, who had borne a good deal very patiently, began, as Mr. Beale said, to “pass remarks.”

“It ain’t so much the little ’uns 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 aggravatin’. It’s the cocker spannel and the Great Danes upsets them.”

“The cocker spannel has got rather a persevering bark,” said Dickie, looking up at the creeping-jenny in the window-boxes. No flowers would grow in the garden, now trampled hard by the india-rubber-soled feet of many dogs; but Dickie did his best with window-boxes, and every window was underlined by a bright dash of color⁠—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 actin’ unneighborly in talking about the pleece, 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 ’ad more elbow-room for ’em. An’ as for exercisin’ of ’em all every day, like the books say⁠—well, ’ow’s one pair of ’ands to do it, let alone legs, and you in another line of business and not able to give yer time to ’em?”

“I wish we had a bigger place, too,” said Dickie; “we could afford one now. Not but what I should be sorry to leave the old place, too. We’ve ’ad some good times here in our time, farver, ain’t us?” He sighed with the air of an old man looking back on the long-ago days of youth.

“You lay to it we ’as,” said Mr. Beale; “but this ’ere backyard, it ain’t a place where dogs can what you call exercise, not to call it exercise. Now is it?”

“Well, then,” said Dickie, “let’s get a move on us.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Beale, laying his pipe on his knee, “now you’re talkin’. Get a move on us. That’s what I ’oped you’d say. ’Member what I says to you in the wintertime that night Mr. Fuller looked in for his bit o’ rent⁠—about me gettin’ of the fidgets in