And now New Cross seemed to go backwards and very far away, its dirty streets, its sordid shifts, its crowds of anxious, unhappy people, who never had quite enough of anything, and Dickie\'s home was in a pleasant cottage from whose windows you could see great green rolling downs, and the smooth silver and blue of the sea, and from whose door you stepped, not on to filthy pavements, but on to a neat brick path, leading between beds glowing with flowers.

Also, he was near Arden, the goal of seven months\' effort. Now he would see Edred and Elfrida again, and help them to find the hidden treasure, as he had once helped them to find their father.

This joyful thought put the crown on his happiness.

But he presently perceived that though he was so close to Arden Castle he did not seem to be much nearer to the Arden children. It is not an easy thing to walk into the courtyard of a ruined castle and ring the bell of a strange[229] house and ask for people whom you have only met in dreams, or as good as dreams. And I don\'t know how Dickie would have managed if Destiny had not kindly come to his help, and arranged that, turning a corner in the lane which leads to the village, he should come face to face with Edred and Elfrida Arden. And they looked exactly like the Edred and Elfrida whom he had played with and quarrelled with in the dream. He halted, leaning on his crutch, for them to come up and speak to him. They came on, looking hard at him—the severe might have called it staring—looked, came up to him, and passed by without a word! But he saw them talking eagerly to each other.

Dickie was left in the lane looking after them. It was a miserable moment. But quite quickly he roused himself. They were talking to each other eagerly, and once Elfrida half looked round. Perhaps it was his shabby clothes that made them not so sure whether he was the Dickie they had known. If they did not know him it should not be his fault. He balanced himself on one foot, beat with his crutch on the ground, and shouted, "Hi!" and "Hullo!" as loud as he could. The other children turned, hesitated, and came back.

"What is it?" the little girl called out; "have you hurt yourself?" And she came up to him and looked at him with kind eyes.[230]

"No," said Dickie; "but I wanted to ask you something."

The other two looked at him and at each other, and the boy said, "Righto."

"You\'re from the Castle, aren\'t you?" he said. "I was wondering whether you\'d let me go down and have a look at it?"

"Of course," said the girl. "Come on."

"Wait a minute," said Dickie, nerving himself to the test. If they didn\'t remember him they\'d think he was mad, and never show him the Castle. Never mind! Now for it!

"Did you ever have a tutor called Mr. Parados?" he asked. And again the others looked at him and at each other. "Parrot-nose for short," Dickie hastened to add; "and did you ever shovel snow on to his head and then ride away in a carriage drawn by swans?"

"It is you!" cried Elfrida, and hugged him. "Edred, it is Dickie! We were saying, could it be you? Oh! Dickie darling, how did you hurt your foot?"

Dickie flushed. "My foot\'s always been like that," he said, "in Nowadays time. When we met in the magic times I was like everybody else, wasn\'t I?"

Elfrida hugged him again, and said no more about the foot. Instead, she said, "Oh, how ripping it is to really and truly find you here! We thought you couldn\'t be real because we[231] wrote a letter to you at the address it said on that bill you gave us. And the letter came back with \'not known\' outside."

"What address was it?" Dickie asked.

"Laurie Grove, New Cross," Edred told him.

"Oh, that was just an address Mr. Beale made up to look grand with," said Dickie. "I remember his telling me about it. He\'s the man I live with; I call him father because he\'s been kind to me. But my own daddy\'s dead."

"Let\'s go up on the downs," said Elfrida, "and sit down, and you tell us all about everything from the very beginning."

So they went up and sat among the furze bushes, and Dickie told them all his story—just as much of it as I have told to you. And it took a long time. And then they reminded each other how they had met in the magic or dream world, and how Dickie had helped them to save their father—which he did do, only I have not had time to tell you about it; but it is all written in "The House of Arden."

"But our magic is all over now," said Edred sadly. "We had to give up ever having any more magic, so as to get father back. And now we shall never find the treasure or be able to buy back the old lands and restore the Castle and bring the water back to the moat, and build nice, dry, warm, cozy cottages for the tenants. But we\'ve got father."[232]

"Well, but look here," said Dickie. "We got my magic all right, and old nurse said I could work it for you, and that\'s really what I\'ve come for, so that we can look for the treasure together."

"That\'s awfully jolly of you," said Elfrida.

"What is your magic?" Edred asked; and Dickie pulled out Tinkler and the white seal and the moon-seeds, and laid them on the turf and explained.

And in the middle of the explanation a shadow fell on the children and the Tinkler and the moon-seeds and the seal, and there was a big, handsome gentleman looking down at them and saying—

"Introduce your friend, Edred."

"Oh, Dickie, this is my father," cried Edred, scrambling up. And Dickie added very quickly, "My name\'s Dick Harding." It took longer for Dickie to get up because of the crutch, and Lord Arden reached his hand down to help him. He must have been a little surprised when the crippled child in the shabby clothes stood up, and instead of touching his forehead, as poor children are taught to do, held out his hand and said—

"How do you do, Lord Arden?"

"I am very well, I thank you," said Lord Arden. "And where did you spring from? You are not a native of these parts, I think?"[233]

"No, but my adopted father is," said Dickie, "and I came from London with him, to see his father, who is old Mr. Beale, and we are staying at his cottage."

Lord Arden sat down beside them on the turf and asked Dickie a good many questions about where he was born, and who he had lived with, and what he had seen and done and been.

Dickie answered honestly and straightforwardly. Only of course he did not tell about the magic, or say that in that magic world he and Lord Arden\'s children were friends and cousins. And all the time they were talking Lord Arden\'s eyes were fixed on his face, except when they wandered to Tinkler and the white seal. Once he picked these up, and looked at the crest on them.

"Where did you get these?" he asked.

Dickie told. And then Lord Arden handed the seal and Tinkler to him and went on with his questions.

At last Elfrida put her arms round her father\'s neck and whispered. "I know it\'s not manners, but Dickie won\'t mind," she said before the whispering began.

"Yes, certainly," said Lord Arden when the whispering was over; "it\'s tea-time. Dickie, you\'ll come home to tea with us, won\'t you?"

"I must tell Mr. Beale," said Dickie; "he\'ll be anxious if I don\'t."[234]

"Shall I hurt you if I put you on my back?" Lord Arden asked, and next minute he was carrying Dickie down the slope towards Arden Castle, while Edred went back to Beale\'s cottage to say where Dickie was. When Edred got back to Arden Castle tea was ready in the parlor, and Dickie was resting in a comfortable chair.

"Isn\'t old Beale a funny old man?" said Edred. "He said Arden Castle was the right place for Dickie, with a face like that. What could he have meant? What are you doing that for?" he added in injured tones, for Elfrida had kicked his hand under the table.

Before tea was over there was a sound of horses\' hoofs and carriage wheels in the courtyard. And the maid-servant opened the parlor door and said, "Lady Talbot." Though he remembered well enough how kind she had been to him, Dickie wished he could creep under the table. It was too hard; she must recognize him. And now Edred and Elfrida, and Lord Arden, who was so kind and jolly, they would all know that he had once been a burglar, and that she had wanted to adopt him, and that he had been ungrateful and had run away. He trembled all over. It was too hard.

Lady Talbot shook hands with the others, and then turned to him. "And who is your little friend?" she asked Edred, and in the same[235] breath cried out—"Why, it\'s my little runaway!"

Dickie only said: "I wasn\'t ungrateful, I wasn\'t—I had to go." But his eyes implored.

And Lady Talbot—Dickie will always love her for that—understood. Not a word about burglars did she say, only—

"I wanted to adopt Dickie once, Lord Arden, but he would not stay."

"I had to get back to father," said Dickie.

"Well, at any rate it\'s pleasant to see each other again," she said. "I always hoped we should some day. No sugar, thank you, Elfrida"—and then sat down and had tea and was as jolly as possible. The only thing which made Dickie at all uncomfortable was when she turned suddenly to the master of the house and said, "Doesn\'t he remind you of any one, Lord Arden?"

And Lord Arden said, "Perhaps he does," with that sort of look that people have when they mean: "Not before the children! I\'d rather talk about it afterwards if you don\'t mind."

Then the three were sent out to play, and Dickie was shown the castle ruins, while Lord Arden and Lady Talbot walked up and down on the daisied grass, and talked for a long time. Dickie knew they were talking about him, but he did not mind. He had that feeling you[236] sometimes have about grown-up people, that they really do understand, and are to be trusted.

"You\'ll be too fine presently to speak to the likes of us, you nipper," said Beale, when a smart little pony cart had brought Dickie back to the cottage. "You an\' your grand friends. Lord Arden indeed——"

"They was as jolly as jolly," said Dickie; "nobody weren\'t never kinder to me nor what Lord Arden was an\' Lady Talbot too—without it was you, farver."

"Ah," said Beale to the old man, "\'e knows how to get round his old father, don\'t \'e?"

"What does he want to talk that way for?" the old man asked. "\'E can talk like a little gentleman all right \'cause we \'eard \'im."

"Oh, that\'s the way we talks up London way," said Dickie. "I learned to talk fine out o\' books."

Mr. Beale said nothing, but that night he actually read for nearly ten minutes in a bound volume of the Wesleyan Magazine. And he was asleep over the same entertaining work when Lord Arden came the next afternoon.

You will be able to guess what he came about. And Dickie had a sort of feeling that perhaps Lord Arden might have seen by his face, as old Beale had, that he was an Arden. So neither he nor you will be much surprised. The person to be really surprised was Mr. Beale.[237]

"You might a-knocked me down with a pickaxe," said Beale later, "so help me three men and a boy you might. It\'s a rum go. My lord \'e says there\'s some woman been writing letters to \'im this long time saying she\'d got \'old of \'is long-lost nephew or cousin or something, and a-wanting to get money out of him—though what for, goodness knows. An\' \'e says you\'re a Arden by rights, you nipper you, an\' \'e wants to take you and bring you up along of his kids—so there\'s an end of you and me, Dickie, old boy. I didn\'t understand more than \'arf of wot \'e was saying. But I tumbled to that much. It\'s all up with you and me and Amelia and the dogs and the little \'ome. You\'re a-goin\' to be a gentleman, you are—an\' I\'ll have to take to the road by meself and be a poor beast of a cadger again. That\'s what it\'ll come to, I know."

"Don\'t you put yourself about," said Dickie calmly. "I ain\'t a-goin\' to leave yer. Didn\'t Lady Talbot ask me to be her boy—and didn\'t I cut straight back to you? I\'ll play along o\' them kids if Lord Arden\'ll let me. But I ain\'t a-goin\' to leave you, not yet I ain\'t. So don\'t you go snivelling afore any one\'s \'urt yer, farver. See?"

But that was before Lord Arden had his second talk with Mr. Beale. After that it was[238]—

"Look \'ere, you nipper, I ain\'t a-goin\' to stand in your light. You\'re goin\' up in the world, says you. Well, you ain\'t the only one. Lord Arden\'s bought father\'s cottage an\' \'e\'s goin\' to build on to it, and I\'m to \'ave all the dawgs down \'ere, and sell \'em through the papers like. And you\'ll come an\' \'ave a look at us sometimes."

"And what about Amelia?" said Dickie, "and the little ones?"

"Well, I did think," said Beale, rubbing his nose thoughtfully, "of asking \'Melia to come down \'ere along o\' the dawgs. Seems a pity to separate \'em somehow. It was Lord Arden put it into my \'ed. \'You oughter be married you ought,\' \'e says to me pleasant like, man to man; \'ain\'t there any young woman I could give a trifle to, to set you and her up in housekeeping?\' So then I casts about, and I thinks of \'Melia. As well \'er as anybody, and she\'s used to the dawgs. And the trifle\'s an hundred pounds. That\'s all. That\'s all! So I\'m sen............