In Deptford the seven months had almost gone by; Dickie had worked much, learned much, and earned much. Mr. Beale, a figure of cleanly habit and increasing steadiness, seemed like a plant growing quickly towards the sun of respectability, or a lighthouse rising bright and important out of a swirling sea—of dogs.
For the dog-trade prospered exceedingly, and Mr. Beale had grown knowing in thoroughbreeds and the prize bench, had learned all about distemper and doggy fits, and when you should give an ailing dog sal-volatile and when you should merely give it less to eat. And the money in the bank grew till it, so to speak, burst the bank-book, and had to be allowed to overflow into a vast sea called Consols.
The dogs also grew, in numbers as well as in size, and the neighbors, who had borne a good deal very patiently, began, as Mr. Beale said, to "pass remarks."
"It ain\'t so much the little \'uns they jib at," said Mr. Beale, taking his pipe out of his mouth and stretching his legs in the back-yard,[209] "though to my mind they yaps far more aggravatin\'. It\'s the cocker spannel and the Great Danes upsets them."
"The cocker spannel has got rather a persevering bark," said Dickie, looking up at the creeping-jenny in the window-boxes. No flowers would grow in the garden, now trampled hard by the india-rubber-soled feet of many dogs; but Dickie did his best with window-boxes, and every window was underlined by a bright dash of color—creeping-jenny, Brompton stocks, stonecrop, and late tulips, and all bought from the barrows in the High Street, made a brave show.
"I don\'t say as they\'re actin\' unneighborly in talking about the pleece, so long as they don\'t do no more than talk," said Beale, with studied fairness and moderation. "What I do say is, I wish we \'ad more elbow-room for \'em. An\' as for exercisin\' of \'em all every day, like the books say—well, \'ow\'s one pair of \'ands to do it, let alone legs, and you in another line of business and not able to give yer time to \'em?"
"I wish we had a bigger place, too," said Dickie; "we could afford one now. Not but what I should be sorry to leave the old place, too. We\'ve \'ad some good times here in our time, farver, ain\'t us?" He sighed with the air of an old man looking back on the long-ago days of youth.[210]
"You lay to it we \'as," said Mr. Beale; "but this \'ere back-yard, it ain\'t a place where dogs can what you call exercise, not to call it exercise. Now is it?"
"Well, then," said Dickie, "let\'s get a move on us."
"Ah," said Mr. Beale, laying his pipe on his knee, "now you\'re talkin\'. Get a move on us. That\'s what I \'oped you\'d say. \'Member what I says to you in the winter-time that night Mr. Fuller looked in for his bit o\' rent—about me gettin\' of the fidgets in my legs? An\' I says, \'Why not take to the road a bit, now and again?\' an\' you says, \'We\'ll see about that, come summer.\' And \'ere is come summer. What if we was to take the road a bit, mate—where there\'s room to stretch a chap\'s legs without kickin\' a dog or knockin\' the crockery over? There\'s the ole pram up-stairs in the back room as lively as ever she was—only wants a little of paint to be fit for a dook, she does. An\' \'ere\'s me, an\' \'ere\'s you, an\' \'ere\'s the pick of the dogs. Think of it, matey—the bed with the green curtains, and the good smell of the herrings you toasts yerself and the fire you makes outer sticks, and the little starses a-comin\' out and a-winkin\' at you, and all so quiet, a-smokin\' yer pipe till it falls outer yer mouth with sleepiness, and no fear o\' settin\' the counterpin afire. What you say, matey, eh?"[211]
Dickie looked lovingly at the smart back of the little house—its crisp white muslin blinds, its glimpses of neat curtains, its flowers; and then another picture came to him—he saw the misty last light fainting beyond the great shoulders of the downs, and the "little starses" shining so bright and new through the branches of fir trees that interlaced above, a sweet-scented bed of soft fallen brown pine-needles.
"What say, mate?" Mr. Beale repeated; and Dickie answered—
"Soon as ever you like\'s what I say. And what I say is, the sooner the better."
Having made up his mind to go, Mr. Beale at once found a dozen reasons why he could not leave home, and all the reasons were four-footed, and wagged loving tails at him. He was anxious, in fact, about the dogs. Could he really trust Amelia?
"Dunno oo you can trust then," said Amelia, tossing a still handsome head. "Anybody \'ud think the dogs was babbies, to hear you."
"So they are—to me—as precious as, anyway. Look here, you just come and live \'ere, \'Melia—see? An\' we\'ll give yer five bob a week. An\' the nipper \'e shall write it all down in lead-pencil on a bit o\' paper for you, what they\'re to \'ave to eat an\' about their physic and which of \'em\'s to have what."[212]
This took some time to settle, and some more time to write down. And then, when the lick of paint was nearly dry on the perambulator and all their shirts and socks were washed and mended, and lying on the kitchen window-ledge ready for packing, what did Mr. Beale do but go out one morning and come back with a perfectly strange dachshund.
"An\' I can\'t go and leave the little beast till he knows \'imself a bit in \'is noo place," said Mr. Beale, "an\' \'ave \'im boltin\' off gracious knows where, and being pinched or carted off to the Dogs\' Home, or that. Can I, now?"
The new dog was very long, very brown, very friendly and charming. When it had had its supper it wagged its tail, turned a clear and gentle eye on Dickie, and without any warning stood on its head.
"Well," said Mr. Beale, "if there ain\'t money in that beast! A trick dog \'e is. \'E\'s wuth wot I give for \'im, so \'e is. Knows more tricks than that \'ere, I\'ll be bound."
He did. He was a singularly well-educated dog. Next morning Mr. Beale, coming down-stairs, was just in time to bang the front door in the face of Amelia coming in, pail-laden, from "doing" the steps, and this to prevent the flight of the new dog. The door of one of the dog-rooms was open, and a fringe of inquisitive dogs ornamented the passage.[213]
"What you open that door at all for?" Mr. Beale asked Amelia.
"I didn\'t," she said, and stuck to it.
That afternoon Beale, smoking in the garden, got up, as he often did, to look through the window at the dogs. He gazed a moment, muttered something, and made one jump to the back door. It was closed. Amelia was giving the scullery floor a "thorough scrub over," and had fastened the door to avoid having it opened with suddenness against her steaming pail or her crouching form.
But Mr. Beale got in at the back-door and out at the front just in time to see the dachshund disappearing at full speed, "like a bit of brown toffee-stick," as he said, round the end of the street. They never saw that dog again.
"Trained to it," Mr. Beale used to say sadly whenever he told the story; "trained to it from a pup, you may lay your life. I see \'im as plain as I see you. \'E listens an\' \'e looks, and \'e doesn\'t \'ear nor see nobody. An\' \'e ups on his \'ind legs and turns the \'andle with \'is little twisty front pawses, clever as a monkey, and hout \'e goes like a harrow in a bow. Trained to it, ye see. I bet his master wot taught \'im that\'s sold him time and again, makin\' a good figure every time, for \'e was a \'andsome dawg as ever I see. Trained the dawg to open the door and bunk \'ome. See? Clever, I call it."[214]
"It\'s a mean trick," said Dickie when Beale told him of the loss of the dog; "that\'s what I call it. I\'m sorry you\'ve lost the dog."
"I ain\'t exactly pleased myself," said Beale, "but no use crying over broken glass. It\'s the cleverness I think of most," he said admiringly. "Now I\'d never a thought of a thing like that myself—not if I\'d lived to a hundred, so I wouldn\'t. You might \'ave," he told Dickie flatteringly, "but I wouldn\'t myself."
"We don\'t need to," said Dickie hastily. "We earns our livings. We don\'t need to cheat to get our livings."
"No, no, dear boy," said Mr. Beale, more hastily still; "course we don\'t. That\'s just what I\'m a-saying, ain\'t it? We shouldn\'t never \'ave thought o\' that. No need to, as you say. The cleverness of it!"
This admiration of the cleverness by which he himself had been cheated set Dickie thinking. He said, very gently and quietly, after a little pause—
"This \'ere walking tower of ours. We pays our own way? No cadging?"
"I should \'ope you know me better than that," said Beale virtuously; "not a patter have I done since I done the Rally and started in the dog line."
"Nor yet no dealings with that redheaded chap what I never see?"[215]
"Now, is it likely?" Beale asked reproachfully. "I should \'ope we\'re a cut above a low chap like wot \'e is. The pram\'s dry as a bone and shiny as yer \'at, and we\'ll start the first thing in the morning."
And in the early morning, which is fresh and sweet even in Deptford, they bade farewell to Amelia and the dogs and set out.
Amelia watched them down the street and waved a farewell as they turned the corner. "It\'ll be a bit lonesome," she said. "One thing, I shan\'t be burgled, with all them dogs in the house."
The voices of the dogs, as she went in and shut the door, seemed to assure her that she would not even be so very lonely.
And now they were really on the road. And they were going to Arden—to that place by the sea where Dickie\'s uncle, in the other life, had a castle, and where Dickie was to meet his cousins, after his seven months of waiting.
You may think that Dickie would be very excited by the thought of meeting, in this workaday, nowadays world, the children with whom he had had such wonderful adventures in the other world, the dream world—too excited, perhaps, to feel really interested in the little every-day happenings of "the road." But this was not so. The present was after all the real thing. The dreams could wait. The[216] knowledge that they were there, waiting, made all the ordinary things more beautiful and more interesting. The feel of the soft dust underfoot, the bright, dewy grass and clover by the wayside, the lessening of houses and the growing wideness of field and pasture, all contented and delighted Dickie. He felt to the full all the joy that Mr. Beale felt in "\'oofing it," and when as the sun was sinking they overtook a bent, slow-going figure, it was with a thrill of real pleasure that Dickie recognized the woman who had given him the blue ribbon for True.
True himself, now grown large and thick of coat, seemed to recognize a friend, gambolled round her dreadful boots, sniffed at her withered hand.
"Give her a lift with her basket, shall us?" Dickie whispered to Mr. Beale and climbed out of the perambulator. "I can make shift to do this last piece."
So the three went on together, in friendly silence. As they neared Orpington the woman said, "Our road parts here; and thank you kindly. A kindness is never wasted, so they say."
"That ain\'t nothing," said Beale; "besides, there\'s the blue ribbon."
"That the dog?" the woman asked.
"Same ole dawg," said Beale, with pride.[217]
"A pretty beast," she said. "Well—so long."
She looked back to smile and nod to them when she had taken her basket and the turning to the right, and Dickie suddenly stiffened all over, as a pointer does when it sees a partridge.
"I say," he cried, "you\'re the nurse——"
"I\'ve nursed a many in my time," she called back.
"But in the dream . . . you know."
"Dreams is queer things," said the woman. "And," she added, "least said is soonest mended."
"But . . ." said Dickie.
"Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut\'s a good motto," said she, nodded again, and turned resolutely away.
"Not very civil, I don\'t think,&quo............