ntly began to collect. The front room was a
parlor--a real parlor. 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
in--into a comfortable room with a horsehair sofa and a big, worn
easy-chair, a carpet, four old mahogany chairs, and a table with a clean
blue-and-red checked cloth on it. There was a bright clock on the
mantelpiece, and vases with chrysanthemums in them, and there were red
woollen curtains as well as the white lace ones.

"You're as snug as snug in here," said the landlord.

"Not so dusty," said Beale, shining from soap; "'ave a look at my
dawgs?"

He succeeded in selling the landlord a pup for ten shillings and came
back to Dickie sitting by the pleasant firelight.

"It's all very smart," he said, "but don't you never feel the fidgets in
your legs? I've kep' steady, and keep steady I will. But in the
spring--when the weather gets a bit open--what d'you say to shutting up
the little 'ouse and taking the road for a bit? Gentlemen do it even,"
he added wistfully. "Walking towers they call 'em."

"I'd like it," said Dickie, "but what about the dogs?"

"Oh! Amelia'd do for them a fair treat, all but Fan and Fly, as 'ud go
along of us. I dunno what it is," he said, "makes me 'anker so after the
road. I was always like it from a boy. Couldn't get me to school, so
they couldn't--allus after birds' nests or