u are not setting
all in order for a burying."

With which agreeable words the black-gowned doctor nodded and smiled at
the little patient, and went out.

And now Dickie literally did not know where he was. It was all so
difficult. Was he Dickie Harding who had lived at New Cross, and sown
the Artistic Parrot Seed, and taken the open road with Mr. Beale? Or
was he that boy with the other name whose father was a knight, and who
lived in a house in Deptford with green trees outside the windows? He
could not remember any house in Deptford that had green trees in its
garden. And the nurse had said something about the pleasant fields and
orchards. Those, at any rate, were not in the Deptford he knew. Perhaps
there were two Deptfords. He knew there were two Bromptons and two
Richmonds (one in Yorkshire). There was something about the way things
happened at this place that reminded him of that nice Lady Talbot who
had wanted him to stay and be her little boy. Perhaps this new boy whose
place he seemed to have taken had a real mother of his own, as nice as
that nice lady.

The nurse had dropped all sorts of things into an iron pot with three
legs, and had set it to boil in the hot ashes. Now it had boiled, and
two maids were carrying it to and fro in the room, as the doctor had
said. Puffs of sweet, strong, spicy steam rose out of it as they jerked
it this way and that.

"Nurse," Dickie called; and she came quickly. "Nurse, have I got a
mother?"

She hugged him. "Indeed thou hast," she said, "but she lies sick at your
father's other house. And you have a baby brother, Richard."

"Then," said Dickie, "I think I will stay here, and try to remember who
I am--I mean who you say I am--and not try to dream any more about New
Cross and Mr. Beale. If this is a dream, it's a better dream than the
other. I want to stay here, Nurse. Let me stay here and see my mother
and my little brother."

"And shalt, my lamb--and shalt," the nurse said.

And after that there was more food, and more sleep, and nights, and
days, and talks, and silences, and very gradually, yet very quickly,
Dickie learned about this new boy who was, and wasn't, himself. He told
the nurse quite plainly that he remembered nothing about himself, and
after he had told her she would sit by his side by the hour and tell him
of things that had happened in the short life of the boy whose place he
filled, the boy whose name was _not_ Dickie Harding. And as soon as she