I fell asleep."

The girls crowded round him with questions and caresses.

"I ought to have cut the string in the train and told the guard--he's a
friend of the gardener's," he said, "but I was asleep. I don't know as
ever I slep' so sound afore. Like as if I'd had sleepy-stuff--you know.
Like they give me at the orspittle."

I should not like to think that Markham had gone so far as to put
"sleepy-stuff" in that bottle of milk; but I am afraid she was not very
particular, and she may have thought it best to send Dickie to sleep so
that he could not betray her or her gardener friend until he was very
far away from both of them.

"But why," asked the long-nosed gentleman--"why put boyth in bathketth?
Upthetting everybody like thith," he added crossly.

"It was," said Dickie slowly, "a sort of joke. I don't want to go
upsetting of people. If you'll lift me down and give me me crutch I'll
'ook it."

But the young ladies would not hear of his hooking it.

"We may keep him, mayn't we, Mr. Rosenberg?" they said; and he judged
that Mr. Rosenberg was a kind man or they would not have dared to speak
so to him; "let's keep him till closing-time, and then one of us will
see him home. He lives in London. He says so."

Dickie had indeed murmured "words to this effect," as policemen call it
when they are not quite sure what people really _have_ said.

"Ath you like," said Mr. Rosenberg, "only you muthn't let him interfere
with bithneth; thath all."

They took him away to the back of the shop. They were dear girls, and
they were very nice to Dickie. They gave him grapes, and a banana, and
some Marie biscuits, and they folded sacks for him to lie on.

And Dickie liked them and was grateful to them--and watched his
opportunity. Because, however kind people were, there was one thing he
had to do--to get back to the Gravesend lodging-house, as his "father"
had told him to do.

The opportunity did not come till late in the afternoon, when one of the
girls was boiling a kettle on a spirit-lamp, and one had gone out to get
cakes in Dickie's honor, which made him uncomfortable, but duty is duty,
and over the Gravesend lodging-house the star of duty shone and
beckoned. The third young lady and Mr. Rosenberg were engaged in
animated explanations with a fair young gentleman about a basket of
roses that had been ordered, and had not been sent.

"Cath," Mr. Rosenberg was saying--"cath down enthureth thpeedy
delivery."

And the yo