along, and I did come
back from the other old long-ago world to help him, and I have been
sticking to things I didn't like so as to help him and get him settled.
He was my bit of work, and now some one else comes along and takes my
work out of my hands, and finishes it. And here's Beale provided for and
settled. And I meant to provide for him myself. And I don't like it!"

That was what he felt at first. But afterwards he had to own that it was
"a jolly lucky thing for Beale." And for himself too. He found that to
be at Arden Castle with Edred and Elfrida all day, at play and at
lessons, was almost as good as being with them in the beautiful old
dream-life. All the things that he had hated in this modern life, when
he was Dickie of Deptford, ceased to trouble him now that he was Richard
Arden. For the difference between being rich and poor is as great as the
difference between being warm and cold.

After that first day a sort of shyness came over the three children, and
they spoke no more of the strange adventures they had had together, but
just played at all the ordinary every-day games, till they almost forgot
that there was any magic, had ever been any. The fact was, the life they
were leading was so happy in itself that they needed no magic to make
them contented. It was not till after the wedding of 'Melia and Mr.
Beale that Dickie remembered that to find the Arden Treasure for his
cousins had been one of his reasons for coming back to this, the
Nowadays world.

I wish I had time to tell you about the wedding. I could write a whole
book about it. How Amelia came down from London and was married in Arden
Church. How she wore a white dress and a large hat with a wreath of
orange blossoms, a filmy veil, and real kid gloves--all gifts of Miss
Edith Arden, Lord Arden's sister. How Lord Arden presented an enormous
wedding cake and a glorious wedding breakfast, and gave away the bride,
and made a speech saying he owed a great debt to Mr. Beale for his
kindness to his nephew Richard Arden, and how surprised every one was to
hear Dickie's new name. How all the dogs wore white favors and had each
a crumb of wedding cake; and how when the wedding feast was over and the
guests gone, the bride tucked up her white dress under a big apron and
set about arranging in the new rooms the "sticks" of furniture which
Dickie and Beale had brought together from the little home in Deptford,
and which had come in a van by road all the way