"Thank you, missis," said Dickie, and set out, quite simply, to walk those miles--nearly thirty. The way lay down the Old Kent Road, and presently Dickie was in familiar surroundings. For the Old Kent Road leads into the New Cross Road, and that runs right through the yellow brick wilderness where Dickie's aunt lived. He dared not follow the road through those well-known scenes. At any moment he might meet his aunt. And if he met his aunt ... he preferred not to think of it. Outside the "Marquis of Granby" stood a van, and the horses' heads were turned away from London. If one could get a lift? Dickie looked anxiously to right and left, in front and behind. There were wooden boxes in the van, a lot of them, and on the canvas of the tilt was painted in fat, white letters-- +----------------+ | FRY'S TONIC | | | | THE ONLY CURE | +----------------+ There would be room on the top of the boxes--they did not reach within two feet of the tilt. Should he ask for a lift, when the carter came out of the "Marquis"? Or should he, if he could, climb up and hide on the boxes and take his chance of discovery on the lift? He laid a hand on the tail-board. "Hi, Dickie!" said a voice surprisingly in his ear; "that you?" Dickie owned that it was, with the feeling of a trapped wild animal, and turned and faced a boy of his own age, a schoolfellow--the one, in fact, who had christened him "Dot-and-go-one." "Oh, what a turn you give me!" he said; "thought you was my aunt. Don't you let on you seen me." "Where you been?" asked the boy curiously. "Oh, all about," Dickie answered vaguely. "Don't you tell me aunt." "Yer aunt? Don't you know?" The boy was quite contemptuous with him for not knowing. "Know? No. Know what?" "She shot the moon--old Hurle moved her; says he don't remember where to. She give him a pint to forget's what I say." "Who's livin' there now?" Dickie asked, interest in his aunt's address swallowed up in a sudden desperate anxiety. "No one don't live there. It's shut up to let apply Roberts 796 Broadway," said the boy. "I say, what'll you do?" "I don't know," said Dickie, turning away from the van, which had abruptly become unimportant. "Which way you goin'?" "Down home--go past your old shop. Coming?" "No," said Dickie. "So long--see you again some day. I got to go this way." And he went it. All the same the twilight saw him creeping down the old road to the house whose back-yard had held the rabbit-hutch, the garden where he had sowed the parrot food, and where the moonflowers had come up so white and beautiful. What a long time ago! It was only a month really, but all the same, what a long time!