asterpiece, you are; you earned it honest if ever a kid done. Pats you
on the napper, she does, and out with 'arf a dollar! A bit of all right,
I call it!"

They went on up the hill as happy as any one need wish to be.

They had told lies, you observe, and had by these lies managed to get
half a crown and a penny out of the charitable; and far from being
ashamed of their acts, they were bubbling over with merriment and
delight at their own cleverness. Please do not be too shocked. Remember
that neither of them knew any better. To the elder tramp lies and
begging were natural means of livelihood. To the little tramp the
whole thing was a new and entrancing game of make-believe.

By evening they had seven-and-sixpence.

"Us'll 'ave a fourpenny doss outer this," said Beale. "Swelp me Bob,
we'll be ridin' in our own moty afore we know where we are at this
rate."

"But you said the bed with the green curtains," urged Dickie.

"Well, p'rhaps you're right. Lay up for a rainy day, eh? Which this
ain't, not by no means. There's a 'aystack a bit out of the town, if I
remember right. Come on, mate."

And Dickie for the first time slept out-of-doors. Have you ever slept
out-of-doors? The night is full of interesting little sounds that will
not, at first, let you sleep--the rustle of little wild things in the
hedges, the barking of dogs in distant farms, the chirp of crickets and
the croaking of frogs. And in the morning the birds wake you, and you
curl down warm among the hay and look up at the sky that is growing
lighter and lighter, and breathe the chill, sweet air, and go to sleep
again wondering how you have ever been able to lie of nights in one of
those shut-up boxes with holes in them which we call houses.

The new game of begging and inventing stories to interest the people
from whom it was worth while to beg went on gaily, day by day and week
by week; and Dickie, by constant practice, grew so clever at taking his
part in the acting that Mr. Beale was quite dazed with admiration.

"Blessed if I ever see such a nipper," he said, over and over again.

And when they got nearly to Hythe, and met with the red-whiskered man
who got up suddenly out of the hedge and said he'd been hanging off and
on expecting them for nigh on a week, Mr. Beale sent Dickie into a field
to look for mushrooms--which didn't grow there--expressly that he might
have a private conversation with the red-whiskered man--a conversation
which began