Harding's Luck Part 28

The Mouldierwarp had, as well as a gentle voice, a finer nose than the Mouldiwarp, his fur was more even and his claws sharper.

"Eh, you be a gentleman, you be," said the Mouldiwarp, "so's 'e--so there's two of ye sure enough."

It was very odd to see and hear these white moles talking like real people and looking like figures on a magic-lantern screen. But d.i.c.kie did not enjoy it as much as perhaps you or I would have done. It was not his pet kind of magic. He liked the good, straightforward, old-fashioned kind of magic that he was accustomed to--the kind that just took you out of one life into another life, and made both lives as real one as the other. Still one must always be polite. So he said--

"I am very glad to see you both."

"There's purty manners," the Mouldiwarp said.

"The pleasure is ours," said the Mouldierwarp instantly. d.i.c.kie could not help seeing that both these old creatures were extremely pleased with him.

"When shall I see the other Mouldiwarp?" he asked, to keep up the conversation--"the one on our shield of arms?"

"You mean the Mouldiestwarp?" said the Mouldier, as I will now call him for short; "you will not see him till the end of the magic. He is very great. I work the magic of s.p.a.ce, my brother here works the magic of time, and the Great Mouldiestwarp controls us, and many things beside.

You must only call on him when you wish to end our magics and to work a magic greater than ours."

"What could be greater?" d.i.c.kie asked, and both the creatures looked very pleased.

"He is a worthier Arden than those little black and white chits of thine," the Mouldier said to the Mouldy (which is what, to save time, we will now call the Mouldiwarp).

"An' so should be--an' so should be," said the Mouldy shortly. "All's for the best, and the end's to come. Where'd ye want to go, my lord?"

"I'm not 'my lord'; I'm only Richard Arden," said d.i.c.kie, "and I want to go back to Mr. Beale and stay with him for seven months, and then to find my cousins."

"Back thou goes then," said the Mouldy; "that part's easy."

"And for the second half of thy wish no magic is needed but the magic of steadfast heart and the patient purpose, and these thou hast without any helping or giving of ours," said the courtly Mouldierwarp.

They waved their white paws on the gray-blue curtain of mist, and behold they were not there any more, and the blue-gray mist was only the night's darkness turning to dawn, and d.i.c.kie was able again to feel solid things--the floor under him, his hand on the sharp edge of the armchair, and the soft, breathing, comfortable weight of True, asleep against his knee. He moved, the dog awoke, and d.i.c.kie felt its soft nose nuzzled into his hand.

"And now for seven months' work, and not one good dream," said d.i.c.kie, got up, put Tinkler and the seal and the moon-seeds into a very safe place, and crept back to bed.

He felt rather heroic. He did not want the treasure. It was not for him.

He was going to help Edred and Elfrida to get it. He did not want the life at Lavender Terrace. He was going to help Mr. Beale to live it. So let him feel a little bit of a hero, since that was what indeed he was, even though, of course, all right-minded children are modest and humble, and fully sensible of their own intense unimportance, no matter how heroically they may happen to be behaving.

CHAPTER VIII

GOING HOME

IN Deptford the seven months had almost gone by; d.i.c.kie 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 "pa.s.s 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, "though to my mind they yaps far more aggravatin'. It's the c.o.c.ker spannel and the Great Danes upsets them."

"The c.o.c.ker spannel has got rather a persevering bark," said d.i.c.kie, 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 d.i.c.kie 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 d.i.c.kie; "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.

"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 d.i.c.kie, "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 sta.r.s.es 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?"

d.i.c.kie 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 sta.r.s.es"

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 d.i.c.kie 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."

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 d.i.c.kie, 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 pa.s.sage.

"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.