Page:Hardings luck - nesbit.djvu/201

Rh bought carving tools and went to the Goldsmiths' Institute to learn to use them. The front bed-room was fitted with a bench for Dickie. The back sitting-room was a kennel for the dogs which Mr. Beale instantly began to collect. The front room was a parlour—a real parlour. A decent young woman—Amelia by name—was engaged to come in every day and "do for" them. The clothes they wore were clean; the food they ate was good. Dickie's knowledge of an ordered life in a great house helped him to order life in a house that was little. And day by day they earned their living. The new life was fairly started. And now Dickie felt that he might dare to go back through the three hundred years to all that was waiting for him there.

"But I will only stay a month," he told himself, "a month here and a month there, that will keep things even. Because if I were longer there than I am here I should not be growing up so fast here as I should there. And everything would be crooked. And how silly if I were a grown man in that life and had to come back and be a little boy in this!"

I do not pretend that the idea did not occur to Dickie, "Now that Beale is fairly started he could do very well without me." But Dickie knew better. He dismissed the idea. Besides, Beale had been good to him and he loved him.

The white curtains had now no sordid secrets to keep—and when the landlord called for the rent Mr. Beale was able to ask him to step