later the crutch clattered in at the pawnbroker's door, and
Dickie laid two more little boxes on the counter.

"Here you are," he said. The pawnbroker looked and exclaimed and
questioned and wondered, and Dickie went away with eight silver
shillings in his pocket, the first coins he had ever carried in his
life. They seemed to have been coined in some fairy mint; they were so
different from any other money he had ever handled.

Mr. Beale, waiting for him by New Cross Station, put his empty pipe in
his pocket and strolled down to meet him. Dickie drew him down a side
street and held out the silver. "Two days' work," he said. "We ain't no
call to take the road 'cept for a pleasure trip. I got a trade, I 'ave.
'Ow much a week's four bob a day? Twenty-four bob I make it."

"Lor!" said Mr. Beale, with his mouth open.

"Now I tell you what, you get 'old of some more old sofy legs and a
stone and a strap to sharpen my knife with. And there we are.
Twenty-four shillings a week for a chap an' 'is nipper ain't so dusty,
farver, is it? I've thought it all up and settled it all out. So long as
the weather holds we'll sleep in the bed with the green curtains, and
I'll 'ave a green wood for my workshop, and when the nights get cold
we'll rent a room of our very own and live like toffs, won't us?"

The child's eyes were shining with excitement.

"'Pon my sam, I believe you _like_ work," said Mr. Beale in tones of
intense astonishment.

"I like it better'n cadgin'," said Dickie.

They did as Dickie had said, and for two days Mr. Beale was content to
eat and doze and wake and watch Dickie's busy fingers and eat and doze
again. But on the third day he announced that he was getting the fidgets
in his legs.

"I must do a prowl," he said; "I'll be back afore sundown. Don't you
forget to eat your dinner when the sun comes level the top of that high
tree. So long, matey."

Mr. Beale slouched off in the sunshine in his filthy old clothes, and
Dickie was left to work alone in the green and golden wood. It was very
still. Dickie hardly moved at all, and the chips that fell from his work
fell more softly than the twigs and acorns that dropped now and then
from some high bough. A goldfinch swung on a swaying hazel branch and
looked at him with bright eyes, unafraid; a grass snake slid swiftly
by--it was out on particular business of its own, so it was not afraid
of Dickie nor he of it. A wood-pigeon swept rustling wings across the
glad