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

“it’s teatime. Dickie, you’ll come home to tea with us, won’t you?”

“I must tell Mr. Beale,” said Dickie; “he’ll be anxious if I don’t.”

“Shall I hurt you if I put you on my back?” Lord Arden asked, and next minute he was carrying Dickie down the slope towards Arden Castle, while Edred went back to Beale’s cottage to say where Dickie was. When Edred got back to Arden Castle tea was ready in the parlor, and Dickie was resting in a comfortable chair.

“Isn’t old Beale a funny old man?” said Edred. “He said Arden Castle was the right place for Dickie, with a face like that. What could he have meant? What are you doing that for?” he added in injured tones, for Elfrida had kicked his hand under the table.

Before tea was over there was a sound of horses’ hoofs and carriage wheels in the courtyard. And the maidservant opened the parlor door and said, “Lady Talbot.” Though he remembered well enough how kind she had been to him, Dickie wished he could creep under the table. It was too hard; she must recognize him. And now Edred and Elfrida, and Lord Arden, who was so kind and jolly, they would all know that he had once been a burglar, and that she had wanted to adopt him, and that he had been ungrateful and had run away. He trembled all over. It was too hard.

Lady Talbot shook hands with the others, and then turned to him. “And who is your little friend?” she asked Edred, and in the same breath cried out⁠—“Why, it’s my little runaway!”

Dickie only said: “I wasn’t ungrateful, I wasn’t⁠—I had to go.” But his eyes implored.

And Lady Talbot⁠—Dickie will always love her for that⁠—understood. Not a word about burglars did she say, only⁠—

“I wanted to adopt Dickie once, Lord Arden, but he would not stay.”

“I had to get back to father,” said Dickie.

“Well, at any rate it’s pleasant to see each other again,” she said. “I always hoped we should some day. No sugar, thank you, Elfrida”⁠—and then sat down and had tea and was as jolly as possible. The only thing which made Dickie at all uncomfortable was when she turned suddenly to the master of the house and said, “Doesn’t he remind you of anyone, Lord Arden?”

And Lord Arden said, “Perhaps he does,” with that sort of look that people have when they mean: “Not before the children! I’d rather talk about it afterwards if you don’t mind.”

Then the three were sent out to play, and Dickie was shown the castle ruins, while Lord Arden and Lady Talbot walked up and down on the daisied grass, and talked for a long time. Dickie knew they were talking about him, but he did not mind. He had that feeling you sometimes have about grown-up people, that they really do understand, and are to be trusted.

“You’ll be too fine presently to speak to the likes of us, you nipper,” said Beale, when a smart little pony cart had brought Dickie back to the cottage. “You an’ your grand friends. Lord Arden indeed⁠—”

“They was as jolly as jolly,” said Dickie; “nobody weren’t never kinder to me nor what Lord Arden was an’ Lady Talbot too⁠—without it was you, farver.”

“Ah,” said Beale to the old man, “ ’e knows how to get round his old father, don’t ’e?”

“What does he want to talk that way for?” the old man asked. “ ’E can talk like a little gentleman all right ’cause we ’eard ’im.”

“Oh, that’s the way we talks up London way,” said Dickie. “I learned to talk fine out o’ books.”

Mr. Beale said nothing, but that night he actually read for nearly ten minutes in a bound volume of the Wesleyan Magazine. And he was asleep over the same entertaining work when Lord Arden came the next afternoon.

You will be able to guess what he came about. And Dickie had a sort of feeling that perhaps Lord Arden might have seen by his face, as old Beale had, that he was an Arden. So neither he nor you will be much surprised. The person to be really surprised was Mr. Beale.

“You might a-knocked me down with a pickaxe,” said Beale later, “so help me three men and a boy you might. It’s a rum go. My lord ’e says there’s some woman been writing letters to ’im this long time saying she’d got ’old of ’is long-lost nephew or cousin or something, and a-wanting to get money out of him⁠—though what for, goodness knows. An’ ’e says you’re a Arden by rights, you nipper you, an’ ’e wants to take you and bring you up along of his kids⁠—so there’s an end of you and me, Dickie, old boy. I didn’t understand more than ’arf of wot ’e was saying. But I tumbled to that much. It’s all up with you and me and Amelia and the dogs and the little ’ome. You’re a-goin’ to be a gentleman, you are⁠—an’ I’ll have to take to the road by meself and be a poor beast of a cadger again. That’s what it’ll come to, I know.”

“Don’t you put yourself about,” said Dickie calmly. “I ain’t a-goin’ to leave yer. Didn’t Lady Talbot ask me to be her boy⁠—and didn’t I cut straight back to you? I’ll play along o’ them kids if Lord Arden’ll let me. But I ain’t a-goin’ to leave you, not yet I ain’t. So don’t you go snivelling afore anyone’s ’urt yer, farver. See?”

But that was before Lord Arden had his second talk with Mr. Beale. After that it was⁠—

“Look ’ere, you nipper, I ain’t a-goin’ to stand in your light. You’re goin’ up in the world, says you. Well, you ain’t the only one. Lord Arden’s bought father’s cottage an’ ’e’s goin’ to build on to it, and I’m to ’ave all the dawgs down ’ere, and sell ’em through the papers like. And you’ll come an’ ’ave a look at us sometimes.”

“And what about Amelia?”