e at the travellers; the thing that
rustled a long length through dead leaves in a beech coppice, and was,
it appeared, a real live snake--all these made the journey a royal
progress to Dickie of Deptford. He forgot that he was lame, forgot that
he had run away--a fact that had cost him a twinge or two of fear or
conscience earlier in the morning. He was happy as a prince is happy,
new-come to his inheritance, and it was Mr. Beale, after all, who was
the first to remember that there was a carriage in which a tired little
boy might ride.

"In you gets," he said suddenly; "you'll be fair knocked. You can look
about you just as well a-sittin' down," he added, laying the crutch
across the front of the perambulator. "Never see such a nipper for
noticing, neither. Hi! there goes a rabbit. See 'im? Crost the road
there? See him?"

Dickie saw, and the crown was set on his happiness. A rabbit. Like the
ones that his fancy had put in the mouldering hutch at home.

"It's got loose," said Dickie, trying to scramble out of the
perambulator; "let's catch 'im and take 'im along."

"'E ain't loose--'e's wild," Mr. Beale explained; "'e ain't never bin
caught. Lives out 'ere with 'is little friendses," he added after a
violent effort of imagination--"in 'oles in the ground. Gets 'is own
meals and larks about on 'is own."

"How beautiful!" said Dickie, wriggling with delight. This life of the
rabbit, as described by Mr. Beale, was the child's first glimpse of
freedom. "I'd like to be a rabbit."

"You much better be my little nipper," said Beale. "Steady on, mate.
'Ow'm I to wheel the bloomin' pram if you goes on like as if you was a
bag of eels?"

They camped by a copse for the midday meal, sat on the grass, made a
fire of sticks, and cooked herrings in a frying-pan, produced from one
of the knobbly bundles.

"It's better'n Fiff of November," said Dickie; "and I do like you. I
like you nexter my own daddy and Mr. Baxter next door."

"That's all right," said Mr. Beale awkwardly.

It was in the afternoon that, half-way up a hill, they saw coming over
the crest a lady and a little girl.

"Hout yer gets," said Mr. Beale quickly; "walk as 'oppy as you can, and
if they arsts you you say you ain't 'ad nothing to eat since las' night
and then it was a bit o' dry bread."

"Right you are," said Dickie, enjoying the game.

"An' mind you call me father."

"Yuss," said Dickie, exaggerating his lameness in the most spirited way.
It w