So Bealby, happy to the pitch of ecstacy, first explored the wonderful interior of the caravan,—there was a dresser, a stove, let-down chairs and tables and all manner of things,—and then nursed the kettle to the singing stage on the patent cooker while the beautiful lady reclined close at hand on a rug. “Dick!” she said. He had forgotten he was Dick. “Dick!” He remembered his personality with a start. “Yes, miss!” He knelt up, with a handful of twigs in his hand and regarded her. “_Well_, Dick,” she said. He remained in flushed adoration. There was a little pause and the lady smiled at him an unaffected smile. “What are you going to be, Dick, when you grow up?” “I don’t know, miss. I’ve wondered.” “What would you like to be?” “Something abroad. Something—so that you could see things.” “A soldier?” “Or a sailor, miss.” “A sailor sees nothing but the sea.” “I’d rather be a sailor than a common soldier, miss.” “You’d like to be an officer?” “Yes, miss—only—” “One of my very best friends is an officer,” she said, a little irrelevantly it seemed to Bealby. “I’d be a Norficer like a shot,” said Bealby, “if I ’ad ’arf a chance, miss.” “Officers nowadays,” she said, “have to be very brave, able men.” “I know, miss,” said Bealby modestly.... The fire required attention for a little while.... The lady turned over on her elbow. “What do you think you are _likely_ to be, Dick!” she asked. He didn’t know. “What sort of man is your stepfather?” Bealby looked at her. “He isn’t much,” he said. “What is he?” Bealby hadn’t the slightest intention of being the son of a gardener. “’E’s a law-writer.” “What! in that village.” “’E ’as to stay there for ’is ’ealth, miss,” he said. “Every summer. ’Is ’ealth is very pre-precocious, miss....” He fed his fire with a few judiciously administered twigs. “What was your own father, Dick?” With that she opened a secret door in Bealby’s imagination. All stepchildren have those dreams. With him they were so frequent and vivid that they had long since become a kind of second truth. He coloured a little and answered with scarcely an interval for reflection. “’E passed as Mal-travers,” he said. “Wasn’t that his name?” “I don’t rightly know, miss. There was always something kep’ from me. My mother used to say, ‘Artie,’ she used to say: ‘there’s things that some day you must know, things that concern you. Things about your farver. But poor as we are now and struggling.... Not yet.... Some day you shall know truly—_who you are_.’ That was ’ow she said it, miss.” “And she died before she told you?” He had almost forgotten that he had killed his mother that very morning. “Yes, miss,” he said.