Page:Hardings luck - nesbit.djvu/101

Rh 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 upstairs 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 shirt 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 Dickie, 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 Dickie'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.

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