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

dogcart returning from Cliffville would pick him up. But the dogcart was a little late, because the pony had dropped a shoe and had had to be taken to the blacksmith’s.

So when Dickie had waited a little while he began to think, as one always does when people don’t keep their appointments, that perhaps he had mistaken the time, or that the clock at the cottage was slow. And when he had waited a little longer, it seemed simply silly to be waiting at all. So he picked up his crutch and got up from the milestone where he had been sitting and set off to walk down to the Castle.

As he went he thought many things, and one of the things he thought was that the memories of King James’s time had grown dim and distant⁠—he looked down on Arden Castle and loved it, and felt that he asked no better than to live there all his life with his cousins and their father, and that, after all, the magic of a dream-life was not needed, when life itself was so good and happy.

And just as he was thinking this a twig cracked sharply in the hedge. Then a dozen twigs rustled and broke, and something like a great black bird seemed to fly out at him and fold him in its wings.

It was not a bird⁠—he knew that the next moment⁠—but a big, dark cloak, that someone had thrown over his head and shoulders, and through it strong hands were holding him.

“Hold yer noise!” said a voice; “if you so much as squeak it’ll be the worse for you.”

“Help!” shouted Dickie instantly.

He was thrown on to the ground. Hands fumbled, his face was cleared of the cloak, and a handkerchief with a round pebble in it was stuffed into his mouth so that he could not speak. Then he was dragged behind a hedge and held there, while two voices whispered above him. The cloak was over his head again now, and he could see nothing, but he could hear. He heard one of the voices say, “Hush! they’re coming.” And then he heard the sound of hoofs and wheels, and Lord Arden’s jolly voice saying, “He must have walked on; we shall catch him up all right.” Then the sound of wheels and hoofs died away, and hard hands pulled him to his feet and thrust the crutch under his arm.

“Step out!” said one of the voices, “and step out sharp⁠—see?⁠—or I’ll l’arn you! There’s a carriage awaiting for you.”

He stepped out; there was nothing else to be done. They had taken the cloak from his eyes now, and he saw presently that they were nearing a coster’s barrow.

They laid him in the barrow, covered him with the cloak, and put vegetable marrows and cabbages on that. They only left him a little room to breathe.

“Now lie still for your life!” said the second voice. “If you stir a inch I’ll lick you till you can’t stand! And now you know.”

So he lay still, rigid with misery and despair. For neither of these voices was strange to him. He knew them both only too well.

X The Noble Deed

When Lord Arden and Elfrida and Edred reached the castle and found that Dickie had not come back, the children concluded that Beale had persuaded him to stay the night at the cottage. And Lord Arden thought that the children must be right. He was extremely annoyed both with Beale and with Dickie for making such an arrangement without consulting him.

“It is impertinent of Beale and thoughtless of the boy,” he said; “and I shall speak a word to them both in the morning.”

But when Edred and Elfrida were gone to bed Lord Arden found that he could not feel quite sure or quite satisfied. Suppose Dickie was not at Beale’s? He strolled up to the cottage to see. Everything was dark at the cottage. He hesitated, then knocked at the door. At the third knock Beale, very sleepy, put his head out of the window.

“Who’s there?” said he.

“I am here,” said Lord Arden. “Richard is asleep, I suppose?”

“I suppose so, my lord,” said Beale, sleepy and puzzled.

“You have given me some anxiety. I had to come up to make sure he was here.”

“But ’e ain’t ’ere,” said Beale. “Didn’t you pick ’im up with the dogcart, same as you said you would?”

“No,” shouted Lord Arden. “Come down, Beale, and get a lantern. There must have been an accident.”

The bedroom window showed a square of light, and Lord Arden below heard Beale blundering about above.

“ ’Ere’s your coat,” Mrs. Beale’s voice sounded; “never mind lacing up of your boots. You orter gone a bit of the way with ’im.”

“Well, I offered for to go, didn’t I?” Beale growled, blundered down the stairs and out through the washhouse, and came round the corner of the house with a stable lantern in his hand. He came close to where Lord Arden stood⁠—a tall, dark figure in the starlight⁠—and spoke in a voice that trembled.

“The little nipper,” he said; and again, “the little nipper. If anything’s happened to ’im! Swelp me! gov’ner⁠—my lord, I mean. What I meanter say, if anything’s ’appened to ’im! One of the best!”

The two men went quickly towards the gate. As they passed down the quiet, dusty road Beale spoke again.

“I wasn’t no good⁠—I don’t deceive you, guv’ner⁠—a no account man I was, swelp me! And the little ’un, ’e tidied me up and told me tales and kep’ me straight. It was ’is doing me and ’Melia come together. An’ the dogs an’ all. An’ the little one. An’ ’e got me to chuck the cadgin’. An’ worse. ’E don’t know what I was like when I met ’im. Why, I set out to make a blighted burglar of ’im⁠—you wouldn’t believe!”

And out the whole story came as Lord Arden and he went along the gray road, looking to right and left where