The pawnbroker stared, frowned, and burst out laughing. "If you don't beat all!" he said. "I give you a present, and you come to pledge it with me! You should have been one of our people! So you want to pledge the seal. Well, well!" "I'd much rather not," said Dickie seriously, "because I love it very much. But I must have my fare to Gravesend. My father's there, waiting for me. And I don't want to leave Tinkler behind." He showed the rattle. "What's the fare to Gravesend?" "Don't know. I thought you'd know. Will you give me the fare for the seal?" The pawnbroker hesitated and looked hard at him. "No," he said, "no. The seal's not worth it. Not but what it's a very good seal," he added, "very good indeed." "See here," said Dickie suddenly, "I know what honor is now, and the word of a gentleman. You will not let me pledge the seal with you. Then let me pledge my word--my word of honor. Lend me the money to take me to Gravesend, and by the honor of a gentleman I will repay you within a month." The voice was firm; the accent, though strange, was not the accent of Deptford street boys. It was the accent of the boy who had had two tutors and a big garden, a place in the King's water-party, and a knowledge of what it means to belong to a noble house. The pawnbroker looked at him. With the unerring instinct of his race, he knew that this was not play-acting, that there was something behind it--something real. The sense of romance, of great things all about them transcending the ordinary things of life--this in the Jews has survived centuries of torment, shame, cruelty, and oppression. This inherited sense of romance in the pawnbroker now leaped to answer Dickie's appeal. (And I do hope I am not confusing you; stick to it; read it again if you don't understand. What I mean is that the Jews always see the big beautiful things; they don't just see that gray is made of black and white; they see how incredibly black black can be, and that there may be a whiteness transcending all the whitest dreams in the world.) "You're a rum little chap," was what the pawnbroker said, "but I like your pluck. Every man's got to make a fool of himself one time or the other," he added, apologizing to the spirit of business. "You mean you will?" said Dickie eagerly. "More fool me," said the Jew, feeling in his pocket. "You won't be sorry; not in the end you won't," said Dickie, as the pawnbroker laid certain monies before him on the mahogany counter. "You'll lend me this? You'll trust me?" "Looks like it," said the Jew. "Then some day I shall do something for you. I don't know what, but something. We never forget, we----" He stopped. He remembered that he was poor little lame Dickie Harding, with no right to that other name which had been his in the dream. He picked up the coins, put them in his pocket--felt the moon-seeds.