you
don't understand. What I mean is that the Jews always see the big
beautiful things; they don't just see that gray is made of black and
white; they see how incredibly black black can be, and that there may be
a whiteness transcending all the whitest dreams in the world.)

"You're a rum little chap," was what the pawnbroker said, "but I like
your pluck. Every man's got to make a fool of himself one time or the
other," he added, apologizing to the spirit of business.

"You mean you will?" said Dickie eagerly.

"More fool me," said the Jew, feeling in his pocket.

"You won't be sorry; not in the end you won't," said Dickie, as the
pawnbroker laid certain monies before him on the mahogany counter.
"You'll lend me this? You'll trust me?"

"Looks like it," said the Jew.

"Then some day I shall do something for you. I don't know what, but
something. We never forget, we----" He stopped. He remembered that he
was poor little lame Dickie Harding, with no right to that other name
which had been his in the dream.

He picked up the coins, put them in his pocket--felt the moon-seeds.

"I cannot repay your kindness," he said, "though some day I will repay
your silver. But these seeds--the moon-seeds," he pulled out a handful.
"You liked the flowers?" He handed a generous score across the red-brown
polished wood.

"Thank you, my lad," said the pawnbroker. "I'll raise them in gentle
heat."

"I think they grow best by moonlight," said Dickie.

* * * * *

So he came to Gravesend and the common lodging-house, and a weary, sad,
and very anxious man rose up from his place by the fire when the
clickety-clack of the crutch sounded on the threshold.

"It's the nipper!" he said; and came very quickly to the door and got
his arm round Dickie's shoulders. "The little nipper, so it ain't! I
thought you'd got pinched. No, I didn't, I knew your clever ways--I knew
you was bound to turn up."

"Yes," said Dickie, looking round the tramps' kitchen, and remembering
the long, clean tapestry-hung dining-hall of his dream. "Yes, I was
bound to turn up. You wanted me to, didn't you?" he added.

"Wanted you to?" Beale answered, holding him close, and looking at him
as men look at some rare treasure gained with much cost and after long
seeking. "Wanted you? Not 'arf! I _don't_ think," and drew him in and
shut the door.

"Then I'm glad I came," said Dickie. But in his heart he was not glad.
In his heart he