.

"Oh, Nurse," he cried, clinging to her with all his might. "I dreamed
that I was lame! And I thought it was true. And it isn't!--it isn't!--it
isn't!"

* * * * *

Quite soon Dickie was able to walk down-stairs and out into the garden
along the grassy walks and long alleys where fruit trees trained over
trellises made such pleasant green shade, and even to try to learn to
play at bowls on the long bowling-green behind the house. The house was
by far the finest house Dickie had ever been in, and the garden was more
beautiful even than the garden at Talbot Court. But it was not only the
beauty of the house and garden that made Dickie's life a new and full
delight. To limp along the leafy ways, to crawl up and down the carved
staircase would have been a pleasure greater than any Dickie had ever
known; but he could leap up and down the stairs three at a time, he
could run in the arched alleys--run and jump as he had seen other
children do, and as he had never thought to do himself. Imagine what you
would feel if you had lived wingless all your life among people who
could fly. That is how lame people feel among us who can walk and run.
And now Dickie was lame no more.

His feet seemed not only to be strong and active, but clever on their
own account. They carried him quite without mistake to the blacksmith's
at the village on the hill--to the centre of the maze of clipped hedges
that was the centre of the garden, and best of all they carried him to
the dockyard.

Girls like dolls and tea-parties and picture-books, but boys like to see
things made and done; else how is it that any boy worth his salt will
leave the newest and brightest toys to follow a carpenter or a plumber
round the house, fiddle with his tools, ask him a thousand questions,
and watch him ply his trade? Dickie at New Cross had spent many an hour
watching those interesting men who open square trap-doors in the
pavement and drag out from them yards and yards of wire. I do not know
why the men do this, but every London boy who reads this will know.

And when he got to the dockyard his obliging feet carried him to a man
in a great leather apron, busy with great beams of wood and tools that
Dickie had never seen. And the man greeted him as an old friend, kissed
him on both cheeks--which he didn't expect, and felt much too old
for--and spread a sack for him that he might sit in the sun on a big
baulk of timber.

"Thou'rt a