bed in the dream.
"I diden sleep much, though."

"Any more dreams?" Beale asked kindly enough.

"No," said Dickie. "I think p'raps it was me wanting so to dream it
again kep' me awake."

"I dessey," said Beale, picking up a straw to chew.

Dickie limped along in the dust, the world seemed very big and hard. It
was a long way to London and he had not been able to dream that dream
again. Perhaps he would never be able to dream it. He stumbled on a big
stone and would have fallen but that Beale caught him by the arm, and as
he swung round by that arm Beale saw that the boy's eyes were thick with
tears.

"Ain't 'urt yerself, 'ave yer?" he said--for in all their wanderings
these were the first tears Dickie had shed.

"No," said Dickie, and hid his face against Beale's coat sleeve. "It's
only----"

"What is it, then?" said Beale, in the accents of long-disused
tenderness; "tell your old farver, then----"

"It's silly," sobbed Dickie.

"Never you mind whether it's silly or not," said Beale. "You out with
it."

"In that dream," said Dickie, "I wasn't lame."

"Think of that now," said Beale admiringly. "You best dream that every
night. Then you won't mind so much of a daytime."

"But I mind more," said Dickie, sniffing hard; "much, much more."

Beale, without more words, made room for him in the crowded
perambulator, and they went on. Dickie's sniffs subsided. Silence.
Presently--

"I say, farver, I'm sorry I acted so silly. You never see me blub afore
and you won't again," he said; and Beale said awkwardly, "That's all
right, mate."

"You pretty flush?" the boy asked later on.

"Not so dusty," said the man.

"'Cause I wanter give that there little box to a chap I know wot lent me
the money for the train to come to you at Gravesend."

"Pay 'im some other day when we're flusher."

"I'd rather pay 'im now," said Dickie. "I could make another box.
There's a bit of the sofer leg left, ain't there?"

There was, and Dickie worked away at it in the odd moments that cluster
round meal times, the half-hours before bed and before the morning
start. Mr. Beale begged of all likely foot-passengers, but he noted that
the "nipper" no longer "stuck it on." For the most part he was quite
silent. Only when Beale appealed to him he would say, "Farver's very
good to me. I don't know what I should do without farver."

And so at last they came to New Cross again, and Mr. Beale stepped in
for half a pint at the Railway Ho