envelope and pencil all ready looks odd, doesn't it? Or he may be a
really benevolent person. Well, you'll know all about it presently.

* * * * *

"And--here we are," said Mr. Beale, stopping in a side-street at an open
door from which yellow light streamed welcomingly. "Now mind you don't
contradict anything wot I say to people. And don't you forget you're my
nipper, and you got to call me daddy."

"I'll call you farver," said Dickie. "I got a daddy of my own, you
know."

"Why," said Mr. Beale, stopping suddenly, "you said he was dead."

"So he is," said Dickie; "but 'e's my daddy all the same."

"Oh, come on," said Mr. Beale impatiently. And they went in.

CHAPTER II

BURGLARS

DICKIE fell asleep between clean, coarse sheets in a hard, narrow bed,
for which fourpence had been paid.

"Put yer clobber under yer bolster, likewise yer boots," was the last
instruction of his new friend and "father."

There had been a bath--or something equally cleansing--in a pail near a
fire where ragged but agreeable people were cooking herrings, sausages,
and other delicacies on little gridirons or pans that they unrolled from
the strange bundles that were their luggage. One man who had no gridiron
cooked a piece of steak on the kitchen tongs. Dickie thought him very
clever. A very fat woman asked Dickie to toast a herring for her on a
bit of wood; and when he had done it she gave him two green apples.

He laid in bed and heard jolly voices talking and singing in the kitchen
below. And he thought how pleasant it was to be a tramp, and what jolly
fellows the tramps were; for it seemed that all these nice people were
"on the road," and this place where the kitchen was, and the good
company and the clean bed for fourpence, was a Tramps' Hotel--one of
many that are scattered over the country and called "Common
Lodging-Houses."

The singing and laughing went on long after he had fallen asleep, and
if, later in the evening, there were loud-voiced arguments, or quarrels
even, Dickie did not hear them.

Next morning, quite early, they took the road. From some mysterious
source Mr. Beale had obtained an old double perambulator, which must
have been made, Dickie thought, for very fat twins, it was so broad and
roomy. Artfully piled on the front part was all the furniture needed by
travellers who mean to sleep every night at the Inn of the Silver Moon.
(That is the inn where they have the be