day he
said to his nurse--

"How long did it take me to dream that dream about making the boxes and
earning the money in the ugly place I told you of?"

"Dreams about that place," she answered him, "take none of _our_ time
here. And dreams about this place take none of what is time in that
other place."

"But my dream endured all night," objected Dickie.

"Not so," said the nurse, smiling between her white cap frills. "It was
_after_ the dream that sleep came--a whole good nightful of it."

So Dickie felt that for Beale no time at all had passed, and that when
he went back--which he meant to do--he would get back to Deptford at the
same instant as he left it. Which is the essence of this particular kind
of white magic. And thus it happened that when he did go back to Mr.
Beale he went because his heart called him, and not for any other reason
at all.

Days and weeks and months went by and it was autumn, and the apples were
ripe on the trees, and the grapes ripe on the garden walls and
trellises. And then came a day when all the servants seemed suddenly to
go mad--a great rushing madness of mops and brooms and dusters and pails
and everything in the house already perfectly clean was cleaned anew,
and everything that was already polished was polished freshly, and when
Dickie had been turned out of three rooms one after the other, had
tumbled over a pail and had a dish-cloth pinned to his doublet by an
angry cook, he sought out the nurse, very busy in the linen-room, and
asked her what all the fuss was about.

"It can't be a spring-cleaning," he said, "because it's the wrong time
of year."

"Never say I did not tell thee," she answered, unfolding a great
embroidered cupboard cloth and holding it up critically. "To-morrow thy
father and mother come home, and thy baby-brother, and to-day sennight
thy little cousins come to visit thee."

"How perfectly glorious!" said Dickie. "But you _didn't_ tell me."

"If I didn't 'twas because you never asked."

"I--I didn't dare to," he said dreamily; "I was so afraid. You see, I've
never seen them."

"Afraid?" she said, laying away the folded cloth and taking out another
from the deep press, oaken, with smooth-worn, brown iron hinges and
lock; "never seen thy father and mother, forsooth!"

"Perhaps it was the fever," said Dickie, feeling rather deceitful. "You
said it made me forget things. I don't remember them. Not at all, I
don't."

"Do not say that to them," the