Page:A Child of the Jago - Arthur Morrison.djvu/132

 What he longed to do was to take it home and play it to Looey, but that was out of the question; he remembered the watch. But there was Jerry Gullen's canary, and him Dicky sought and found. Canary blinked solemnly when the resplendent box was flashed in his eyes, and set his ears back and forward as, muffled again in Dicky's jacket, it tinkled out its tune.

Tommy Rann should not see it, lest he prevail over its munificent dedication to the Ropers. Truly, as it was, Dicky's resolution was hard to abide by. The thing acquired at such a cost of patience, address, hard flight and deadly fear was surely his by right—as surely, quite, as the clock had been. And such a thing he might never touch again.

But he put by the temptation manfully, and came out by Jerry Gullen's front door. He would look no more on the music-box, beautiful as it was: he would convey it to the Ropers before temptation came again.