"What a nipper it is, though!" said Mr. Beale regretfully. "For the burgling, I mean--sharp--clever--no one to touch him. But I don't cotton to it myself," he added quickly, "not the burgling, I don't. You're always liable to get yourself into trouble over it, one way or the other--that's the worst of it. I don't know how it is," he ended pensively, "but somehow it _always_ leads to trouble." Dickie picked up seven straws from among the stubble and idly plaited them together; the nurse had taught him this in the dream when he was still weak from the fever. "That's very flash, that what you're doing," said Beale; "who learned you that?" "I learned it in a dream," said Dickie slowly. "I dreamed I 'ad a fever--and--I'll tell you if you like: it's a good yarn--good as Here Ward, very near." Beale lay back on the dry stubble, his pipe between his teeth. "Fire away," he said, and Dickie fired away. When the long tale ended, the sun was beginning to go down towards its bed in the west. There was a pause. "You'd make a tidy bit on the 'alls," said Beale, quite awestruck. "The things you think of! When did you make all that up?" "I dreamed it, I tell you," said Dickie. "You always could stick it on," said Mr. Beale admiringly. "I ain't goin' to stick it on never no more," said Dickie. "They called it lying and cheating, where I was--in my dream, I mean." "Once let a nipper out of yer sight," said Mr. Beale sadly, "and see what comes of it! 'No. 2' a-goin' to stick it on no more! Then how's us to get a honest living? Answer me that, young chap." "I don't know," said Dickie, "but we got to do it som'ow." "It ain't to be done--not with all the unemployed there is about," said Mr. Beale. "Besides, you've got a regular gift for sticking it on--a talent I call it. And now you want to throw it away. But you can't. We _got_ to live." "In the dream," said Dickie, "there didn't seem to be no unemployed. Every one was 'prenticed to a trade. I wish it was like that here." "Well, it ain't," said Mr. Beale shortly. "I wasn't never 'prenticed to no trade, no more'n what you'll be." "Worse luck," said Dickie. "But I started learning a lot of things--games mostly, in the dream, I did--and I started making a boat--a galleon they called it. All the names is different there. And I carved a little box--a fair treat it was--with my father's arms on it." "Yer father's _what_?" "Coat of arms. Gentlemen there all has different things--patterns like; they calls 'em coats of arms, and they put it on their silver and on their carriages and their furniture." "Put _what_?" Beale asked again. "The blazon. All gentlepeople have it." "Don't you come the blazing toff over me," said Beale with sudden fierceness, "'cause I won't 'ave it. See? It's them bloomin' Talbots put all this rot into your head." "The Talbots?" said Dickie. "Oh! the Talbots ain't been gentry more than a couple of hundred years. Our family's as old as King Alfred."