ay happen to be behaving.

CHAPTER VIII

GOING HOME

IN Deptford the seven months had almost gone by; Dickie had worked much,
learned much, and earned much. Mr. Beale, a figure of cleanly habit and
increasing steadiness, seemed like a plant growing quickly towards the
sun of respectability, or a lighthouse rising bright and important out
of a swirling sea--of dogs.

For the dog-trade prospered exceedingly, and Mr. Beale had grown knowing
in thoroughbreeds and the prize bench, had learned all about distemper
and doggy fits, and when you should give an ailing dog sal-volatile and
when you should merely give it less to eat. And the money in the bank
grew till it, so to speak, burst the bank-book, and had to be allowed to
overflow into a vast sea called Consols.

The dogs also grew, in numbers as well as in size, and the neighbors,
who had borne a good deal very patiently, began, as Mr. Beale said, to
"pass remarks."

"It ain't so much the little 'uns they jib at," said Mr. Beale, taking
his pipe out of his mouth and stretching his legs in the back-yard,
"though to my mind they yaps far more aggravatin'. It's the cocker
spannel and the Great Danes upsets them."

"The cocker spannel has got rather a persevering bark," said Dickie,
looking up at the creeping-jenny in the window-boxes. No flowers would
grow in the garden, now trampled hard by the india-rubber-soled feet of
many dogs; but Dickie did his best with window-boxes, and every window
was underlined by a bright dash of color--creeping-jenny, Brompton
stocks, stonecrop, and late tulips, and all bought from the barrows in
the High Street, made a brave show.

"I don't say as they're actin' unneighborly in talking about the pleece,
so long as they don't do no _more_ than talk," said Beale, with studied
fairness and moderation. "What I do say is, I wish we 'ad more
elbow-room for 'em. An' as for exercisin' of 'em all every day, like the
books say--well, 'ow's one pair of 'ands to do it, let alone legs, and
you in another line of business and not able to give yer time to 'em?"

"I wish we had a bigger place, too," said Dickie; "we could afford one
now. Not but what I should be sorry to leave the old place, too. We've
'ad some good times here in our time, farver, ain't us?" He sighed with
the air of an old man looking back on the long-ago days of youth.

"You lay to it we 'as," said Mr. Beale; "but this 'ere back-yard, it
ain't a place where dogs can what