Harding's Luck Part 17

"This what you want?" he asked.

d.i.c.kie took it eagerly. "I do wonder if I can," he said. "I feel just exactly like as if I could. I say, farver, let's get out in the woods somewheres quiet and take our grub along. Somewheres where n.o.body can't say, 'What you up to?' and make a mock of me."

They found a place such as d.i.c.kie desired, a warm, sunny nest in the heart of a green wood, and all through the long, warm hours of the autumn day Mr. Beale lay lazy in the suns.h.i.+ne while d.i.c.kie, very pale and determined, sliced, chipped, and picked at the sofa leg with the knife the gardener had given him.

It was hard to make him lay the work down even for dinner, which was of a delicious and extravagant kind--new bread, German sausage, and beer in a flat bottle. For from the moment when the knife touched the wood d.i.c.kie knew that he had not forgotten, and that what he had done in the Deptford dockyard under the eyes of Sebastian, the s.h.i.+pwright who had helped to sink the Armada, he could do now alone in the woods beyond Gravesend.

It was after dinner that Mr. Beale began to be interested.

"Swelp me!" he said; "but you've got the hang of it somehow. A box, ain't it?"

"A box," said d.i.c.kie, smoothing a rough corner; "a box with a lid that fits. And I'll carve our arms on the top--see, I've left that bit stickin' up a purpose."

It was the hardest day's work d.i.c.kie had ever done. He stuck to it and stuck to it and stuck to it till there was hardly light left to see it by. But before the light was wholly gone the box had wholly come--with the carved coat of arms and the lid that fitted.

"Well," said Mr. Beale, striking a match to look at it; "if that ain't a fair treat! There's many a swell bloke 'ud give 'arf a dollar for that to put 'is baccy in. You've got a trade, my son, that's sure. Why didn't you let on before as you could? Blow the beastly match! It's burned me finger."

The match went out and Beale and d.i.c.kie went back to supper in the crowded, gas-lit room. When supper was over--it was tripe and onions and fried potatoes, very luxurious--Beale got up and stood before the fire.

"I'm a-goin' to 'ave a hauction, I am," he said to the company at large.

"Here's a thing and a very pretty thing, a baccy-box, or a snuff-box, or a box to shut yer gold money in, or yer diamonds. What offers?"

"'And it round," said a black-browed woman, with a basket covered in American cloth no blacker than her eyes.

"That I will," said Beale readily. "I'll 'and it round _in_ me 'and. And I'll do the 'andin' meself."

He took it round from one to another, showed the neat corners, the neat carving, the neat fit of the square lid.

"Where'd yer nick that?" asked a man with a red handkerchief.

"The nipper made it."

"Pinched it more likely," some one said.

"I see 'im make it," said Beale, frowning a little.

"Let me 'ave a squint," said a dingy gray old man sitting apart. For some reason of his own Beale let the old man take the box into his hand.

But he kept very close to him and he kept his eyes on the box.

"All outer one piece," said the old man. "I dunno oo made it an' I don't care, but that was made by a workman as know'd his trade. I was a cabinet-maker once, though you wouldn't think it to look at me. There ain't n.o.body here to pay what that little hobjec's worth. Hoil it up with a drop of cold linseed and leave it all night, and then in the morning you rub it on yer trouser leg to s.h.i.+ne it, and then rub it in the mud to dirty it, and then hoil it again and dirty it again, and you'll get 'arf a thick 'un for it as a genuwine hold antique. That's wot you do."

"Thankee, daddy," said Beale, "an' so I will."

He slipped the box in his pocket. When d.i.c.kie next saw the box it looked as old as any box need look.

"Now we'll look out for a shop where they sells these 'ere hold antics,"

said Beale. They were on the road and their faces were set towards London. d.i.c.kie's face looked pinched and white. Beale noticed it.

"You don't look up to much," he said; "warn't your bed to your liking?"

"The bed was all right," said d.i.c.kie, thinking of the bed in the dream.

"I diden sleep much, though."

"Any more dreams?" Beale asked kindly enough.

"No," said d.i.c.kie. "I think p'raps it was me wanting so to dream it again kep' me awake."

"I dessey," said Beale, picking up a straw to chew.

d.i.c.kie limped along in the dust, the world seemed very big and hard. It was a long way to London and he had not been able to dream that dream again. Perhaps he would never be able to dream it. He stumbled on a big stone and would have fallen but that Beale caught him by the arm, and as he swung round by that arm Beale saw that the boy's eyes were thick with tears.

"Ain't 'urt yerself, 'ave yer?" he said--for in all their wanderings these were the first tears d.i.c.kie had shed.

"No," said d.i.c.kie, and hid his face against Beale's coat sleeve. "It's only----"

"What is it, then?" said Beale, in the accents of long-disused tenderness; "tell your old farver, then----"

"It's silly," sobbed d.i.c.kie.

"Never you mind whether it's silly or not," said Beale. "You out with it."

"In that dream," said d.i.c.kie, "I wasn't lame."

"Think of that now," said Beale admiringly. "You best dream that every night. Then you won't mind so much of a daytime."

"But I mind more," said d.i.c.kie, sniffing hard; "much, much more."

Beale, without more words, made room for him in the crowded perambulator, and they went on. d.i.c.kie's sniffs subsided. Silence.

Presently--

"I say, farver, I'm sorry I acted so silly. You never see me blub afore and you won't again," he said; and Beale said awkwardly, "That's all right, mate."

"You pretty flush?" the boy asked later on.

"Not so dusty," said the man.

"'Cause I wanter give that there little box to a chap I know wot lent me the money for the train to come to you at Gravesend."

"Pay 'im some other day when we're flusher."

"I'd rather pay 'im now," said d.i.c.kie. "I could make another box.

There's a bit of the sofer leg left, ain't there?"

There was, and d.i.c.kie worked away at it in the odd moments that cl.u.s.ter round meal times, the half-hours before bed and before the morning start. Mr. Beale begged of all likely foot-pa.s.sengers, but he noted that the "nipper" no longer "stuck it on." For the most part he was quite silent. Only when Beale appealed to him he would say, "Farver's very good to me. I don't know what I should do without farver."

And so at last they came to New Cross again, and Mr. Beale stepped in for half a pint at the Railway Hotel, while d.i.c.kie went clickety-clack along the pavement to his friend the p.a.w.nbroker.

"Here we are again," said that tradesman; "come to p.a.w.n the rattle?"