Harding's Luck Part 11

"When I am, I will," said d.i.c.kie, quite seriously. And then they both laughed.

The "Elephant and Castle" marks but a very short stage of the weary way between London and Gravesend. When he got out of the tram d.i.c.kie asked the way again, this time of a woman who was selling matches in the gutter. She pointed with the blue box she held in her hand.

"It's a long way," she said, in a tired voice; "nigh on thirty mile."

"Thank you, missis," said d.i.c.kie, and set out, quite simply, to walk those miles--nearly thirty. The way lay down the Old Kent Road, and presently d.i.c.kie was in familiar surroundings. For the Old Kent Road leads into the New Cross Road, and that runs right through the yellow brick wilderness where d.i.c.kie's aunt lived. He dared not follow the road through those well-known scenes. At any moment he might meet his aunt.

And if he met his aunt ... he preferred not to think of it.

Outside the "Marquis of Granby" stood a van, and the horses' heads were turned away from London. If one could get a lift? d.i.c.kie looked anxiously to right and left, in front and behind. There were wooden boxes in the van, a lot of them, and on the canvas of the tilt was painted in fat, white letters--

+----------------+ FRY'S TONIC THE ONLY CURE +----------------+

There would be room on the top of the boxes--they did not reach within two feet of the tilt.

Should he ask for a lift, when the carter came out of the "Marquis"? Or should he, if he could, climb up and hide on the boxes and take his chance of discovery on the lift? He laid a hand on the tail-board.

"Hi, d.i.c.kie!" said a voice surprisingly in his ear; "that you?"

d.i.c.kie owned that it was, with the feeling of a trapped wild animal, and turned and faced a boy of his own age, a schoolfellow--the one, in fact, who had christened him "Dot-and-go-one."

"Oh, what a turn you give me!" he said; "thought you was my aunt. Don't you let on you seen me."

"Where you been?" asked the boy curiously.

"Oh, all about," d.i.c.kie answered vaguely. "Don't you tell me aunt."

"Yer aunt? Don't you know?" The boy was quite contemptuous with him for not knowing.

"Know? No. Know what?"

"She shot the moon--old Hurle moved her; says he don't remember where to. She give him a pint to forget's what I say."

"Who's livin' there now?" d.i.c.kie asked, interest in his aunt's address swallowed up in a sudden desperate anxiety.

"No one don't live there. It's shut up to let apply Roberts 796 Broadway," said the boy. "I say, what'll you do?"

"I don't know," said d.i.c.kie, turning away from the van, which had abruptly become unimportant. "Which way you goin'?"

"Down home--go past your old shop. Coming?"

"No," said d.i.c.kie. "So long--see you again some day. I got to go this way." And he went it.

All the same the twilight saw him creeping down the old road to the house whose back-yard had held the rabbit-hutch, the garden where he had sowed the parrot food, and where the moonflowers had come up so white and beautiful. What a long time ago! It was only a month really, but all the same, what a long time!

The news of his aunt's departure had changed everything. The steadfast desire to get to Gravesend, to find his father, had given way, at any rate for the moment, to a burning anxiety about Tinkler and the white stone. Had his aunt found them and taken them away? If she hadn't and they were still there, would it not be wise to get them at once? Because of course some one else might take the house and find the treasures.

Yes, it would certainly be wise to go to-night, to get in by the front window--the catch had always been broken--to find his treasures, or at any rate to make quite sure whether he had lost them or not.

No one noticed him as he came down the street, very close to the railings. There are so many boys in the streets in that part of the world. And the front window went up easily. He climbed in, dragging his crutch after him.

He got up-stairs very quickly, on hands and knees, went straight to the loose board, dislodged it, felt in the hollow below. Oh, joy! His hands found the soft bundle of rags that he knew held Tinkler and the seal. He put them inside the front of his s.h.i.+rt and shuffled down. It was not too late to do a mile or two of the Gravesend road. But the moonflower--he would like to have one more look at that.

He got out into the garden--there stood the stalk of the flower very tall in the deepening dusk. He touched the stalk. It was dry and hard--three or four little dry things fell from above and rattled on his head.

"Seeds, o' course," said d.i.c.kie, who knew more about seeds now than he had done when he saved the parrot seeds. One does not tramp the country for a month, at d.i.c.kie's age, without learning something about seeds.

He got out the knife that should have cut the string of the basket in the train, opened it and cut the stalk of the moonflower, very carefully so that none of the seeds should be, and only a few were, lost. He crept into the house holding the stalk upright and steady as an acolyte carries a processional cross.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HE MADE, WITH TRIPLE LINES OF SILVERY SEEDS, A SIX-POINTED STAR"

[_Page 81_]

The house was quite dark now, but a street lamp threw its light into the front room, bare, empty, and dusty. There was a torn newspaper on the floor. He spread a sheet of it out, kneeled by it and shook the moonflower head over it. The seeds came rattling out--dozens and dozens of them. They were bigger than sunflower seeds and flatter and rounder, and they shone like silver, or like the pods of the plant we call honesty.

"Oh, beautiful, beautiful!" said d.i.c.kie, letting the smooth shapes slide through his fingers. Have you ever played with mother-of-pearl card counters? The seeds of the moonflower were like those.

He pulled out Tinkler and the seal and laid them on the heap of seeds.

And then knew quite suddenly that he was too tired to travel any further that night.

"I'll doss here," he said; "there's plenty papers"--he knew by experience that, as bed-clothes, newspapers are warm, if noisy--"and get on in the morning afore people's up."

He collected all the paper and straw--there was a good deal littered about in the house--and made a heap in the corner, out of the way of the window. He did not feel afraid of sleeping in an empty house, only very lordly and magnificent because he had a whole house to himself. The food still left in his pockets served for supper, and you could drink quite well at the wash-house tap by putting your head under and turning it on very slowly.

And for a final enjoyment he laid out his treasures on the newspaper--Tinkler and the seal in the middle and the pearly counters arranged in patterns round them, circles and squares and oblongs. The seeds lay very flat and fitted close together. They were excellent for making patterns with. And presently he made, with triple lines of silvery seeds, a six-pointed star, something like this--

[Ill.u.s.tration]

^ / _____/________ / / / / ^ ^ / / /________/___ / / v

with the rattle and the seal in the middle, and the light from the street lamp shone brightly on it all.

"That's the prettiest of the lot," said d.i.c.kie Harding, alone in the empty house.

And then the magic began.

CHAPTER IV

WHICH WAS THE DREAM?

THE two crossed triangles of white seeds, in the midst Tinkler and the white seal, lay on the floor of the little empty house, grew dim and faint before d.i.c.kie's eyes, and his eyes suddenly smarted and felt tired so that he was very glad to shut them. He had an absurd fancy that he could see, through his closed eyelids, something moving in the middle of the star that the two triangles made. But he knew that this must be nonsense, because, of course, you cannot see through your eyelids. His eyelids felt so heavy that he could not take the trouble to lift them even when a voice spoke quite near him. He had no doubt but that it was the policeman come to "take him up" for being in a house that was not his.

"Let him," said d.i.c.kie to himself. He was too sleepy to be afraid.

But for a policeman, who is usually of quite a large pattern, the voice was unusually soft and small. It said briskly--

"Now, then, where do you want to go to?"