the west. There was a pause.

"You'd make a tidy bit on the 'alls," said Beale, quite awestruck. "The
things you think of! When did you make all that up?"

"I dreamed it, I tell you," said Dickie.

"You always could stick it on," said Mr. Beale admiringly.

"I ain't goin' to stick it on never no more," said Dickie. "They called
it lying and cheating, where I was--in my dream, I mean."

"Once let a nipper out of yer sight," said Mr. Beale sadly, "and see
what comes of it! 'No. 2' a-goin' to stick it on no more! Then how's us
to get a honest living? Answer me that, young chap."

"I don't know," said Dickie, "but we got to do it som'ow."

"It ain't to be done--not with all the unemployed there is about," said
Mr. Beale. "Besides, you've got a regular gift for sticking it on--a
talent I call it. And now you want to throw it away. But you can't. We
_got_ to live."

"In the dream," said Dickie, "there didn't seem to be no unemployed.
Every one was 'prenticed to a trade. I wish it was like that here."

"Well, it ain't," said Mr. Beale shortly. "I wasn't never 'prenticed to
no trade, no more'n what you'll be."

"Worse luck," said Dickie. "But I started learning a lot of
things--games mostly, in the dream, I did--and I started making a
boat--a galleon they called it. All the names is different there. And I
carved a little box--a fair treat it was--with my father's arms on it."

"Yer father's _what_?"

"Coat of arms. Gentlemen there all has different things--patterns like;
they calls 'em coats of arms, and they put it on their silver and on
their carriages and their furniture."

"Put _what_?" Beale asked again.

"The blazon. All gentlepeople have it."

"Don't you come the blazing toff over me," said Beale with sudden
fierceness, "'cause I won't 'ave it. See? It's them bloomin' Talbots put
all this rot into your head."

"The Talbots?" said Dickie. "Oh! the Talbots ain't been gentry more
than a couple of hundred years. Our family's as old as King Alfred."

"Stow it, I say!" said Beale, more fiercely still. "I see what you're
after; you want us to part company, that's what you want. Well, go. Go
back to yer old Talbots and be the nice lady's little boy with velvet
kicksies and a clean anky once a week. That's what you do."

Dickie looked forlornly out over the river.

"I can't 'elp what I dreams, can I?" he said. "In the dream I'd got lots
of things. Uncles and aunts an' a little brother. I never seen him
tho