honorable men and
comrades in all high emprise. I mean," he explained, noticing Mr.
Beale's open mouth and eyes more lobster-like than ever--"I mean that's
all right, farver, and you see it don't make any difference to me. I
knows you're straight now, even if it didn't begin just like that. Let's
get to bed, shan't us?"

Mr. Beale dreamed that he was trying to drown Dickie in a pond full of
stewed eels. Dickie didn't dream at all.

* * * * *

You may wonder why, since going to the beautiful other world took no
time and was so easy, Dickie did not do it every night, or even at odd
times during the day.

Well, the fact was he dared not. He loved the other life so much that he
feared that, once again there, he might not have the courage to return
to Mr. Beale and Deptford and the feel of dirty clothes and the smell of
dust-bins. It was no light thing to come back from that to this. And now
he made a resolution--that he would not set out the charm of Tinkler and
seal and moon-seeds until he had established Mr. Beale in an honorable
calling and made a life for him in which he could be happy. A great
undertaking for a child? Yes. But then Dickie was not an ordinary child,
or none of these adventures would ever have happened to him.

The pawnbroker, always a good friend to Dickie, had the wit to see that
the child was not lying when he said that the box and the bag and the
gold pieces had been given to him.

He changed the gold pieces stamped with the image of Queen Elizabeth for
others stamped with the image of Queen Victoria. And he gave five pounds
for the wrought-iron box, and owned that he should make a little--a very
little--out of it. "And if your grand society friends give you any more
treasures, you know the house to come to--the fairest house in the
trade, though I say it."

"Thank you very much," said Dickie; "you've been a good friend to me. I
hope some day I shall do you a better turn than the little you make out
of my boxes and things."

The Jew sold the wrought-iron box that very week for twenty guineas.

And Dickie and Mr. Beale now possessed twenty-seven pounds. New clothes
were bought--more furniture. Twenty-two pounds of the money was put in
the savings bank. Dickie bought carving tools and went to the
Goldsmiths' Institute to learn to use them. The front bedroom was fitted
with a bench for Dickie. The back sitting-room was a kennel for the dogs
which Mr. Beale insta