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He kept the account chalked up in the potting shed, and when it reached a hundred, Dickie was entitled to ask her father for a penny. "I call it a shame to take her slug-money," cried out Nancy from the swing. "No one wants to take it," replied Pennie, "but she shall give it if she likes."
She rushed to the window, and was relieved to observe that the doctor's carriage was bowling down the avenue. The doctors had therefore gone. Miss Symes would come to bed very soon now. Perhaps Miss Symes would know how to catch Dickie. Anyhow, Fanny would not be alone. She crouched in her chair near the dying embers of the fire.
To limp along the leafy ways, to crawl up and down the carved staircase would have been a pleasure greater than any Dickie had ever known; but he could leap up and down the stairs three at a time, he could run in the arched alleys run and jump as he had seen other children do, and as he had never thought to do himself.
And then one day, quite as though it were the most natural thing in the world, his cousin Edred and Lady Arden his aunt were set free from the Tower and came home. The King had suddenly decided that they at least had had nothing to do with the plot. Lady Arden cried all the time, and, as Dickie owned to himself, "there was enough to make her."
Just then a customer came in a woman with her Sunday dress and a pair of sheets to pawn because her man was out of work and the children were hungry. "Run along, now," said the Jew, "I've nothing more for you to-day." Dickie flushed and went. Three days 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 singing and laughing went on long after he had fallen asleep, and if, later in the evening, there were loud-voiced arguments, or quarrels even, Dickie did not hear them. Next morning, quite early, they took the road. From some mysterious source Mr. Beale had obtained an old double perambulator, which must have been made, Dickie thought, for very fat twins, it was so broad and roomy.
But in his soul he was glad, because the soul is greater than the heart, and knows greater things. And now Dickie loved Beale more than ever, because for him he had sacrificed his dream. So he had gained something. Because loving people is the best thing in the world better even than being loved. Just think this out, will you, and see if I am not right. There were herrings for tea.
Granny watched him for a few moments with her eyes full of twinkles, then she told him to run along to the tree. And Dickie thanked Granny and ran as fast as he could to the tree where the three crows were still talking. The first crow cried, "I know where there is a box filled with golden pennies!" "Ah, my brother, where?" asked the second crow.
This was the moment he had been so carefully prepared for. He must think what he was saying. "Yes," said the lady gently, "it's all right poor little chap, don't be frightened nobody wants to hurt you!" "I'm not frightened," said Dickie "not now." "To let ?" reminded the lady, persuasively. "To let the man in." "What man?" "I dunno."
"Ain't he a worm, though!" exclaimed Amelia, sparing nobody's sensitiveness. "He's nothing of the sort," Sheila protested indignantly. "He is a dear!" Amelia opened her prominent eyes and pursed her lips. A reassuring light dawned on her bewilderment. "Oh, say, dearie, I wasn't speakin' of your Mister Jim. I was makin' reference to Dickie."
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