runaway!"

Dickie only said: "I wasn't ungrateful, I wasn't--I had to go." But his
eyes implored.

And Lady Talbot--Dickie will always love her for that--understood. Not a
word about burglars did she say, only--

"I wanted to adopt Dickie once, Lord Arden, but he would not stay."

"I had to get back to father," said Dickie.

"Well, at any rate it's pleasant to see each other again," she said. "I
always hoped we should some day. No sugar, thank you, Elfrida"--and then
sat down and had tea and was as jolly as possible. The only thing which
made Dickie at all uncomfortable was when she turned suddenly to the
master of the house and said, "Doesn't he remind you of any one, Lord
Arden?"

And Lord Arden said, "Perhaps he does," with that sort of look that
people have when they mean: "Not before the children! I'd rather talk
about it afterwards if you don't mind."

Then the three were sent out to play, and Dickie was shown the castle
ruins, while Lord Arden and Lady Talbot walked up and down on the
daisied grass, and talked for a long time. Dickie knew they were talking
about him, but he did not mind. He had that feeling you sometimes have
about grown-up people, that they really do understand, and are to be
trusted.

"You'll be too fine presently to speak to the likes of us, you nipper,"
said Beale, when a smart little pony cart had brought Dickie back to the
cottage. "You an' your grand friends. Lord Arden indeed----"

"They was as jolly as jolly," said Dickie; "nobody weren't never kinder
to me nor what Lord Arden was an' Lady Talbot too--without it was you,
farver."

"Ah," said Beale to the old man, "'e knows how to get round his old
father, don't 'e?"

"What does he want to talk that way for?" the old man asked. "'E can
talk like a little gentleman all right 'cause we 'eard 'im."

"Oh, that's the way we talks up London way," said Dickie. "I learned to
talk fine out o' books."

Mr. Beale said nothing, but that night he actually read for nearly ten
minutes in a bound volume of the _Wesleyan Magazine_. And he was asleep
over the same entertaining work when Lord Arden came the next afternoon.

You will be able to guess what he came about. And Dickie had a sort of
feeling that perhaps Lord Arden might have seen by his face, as old
Beale had, that he was an Arden. So neither he nor you will be much
surprised. The person to be really surprised was Mr. Beale.

"You might a-knocked me down with a pickaxe," said B