Dickie, however, had learned his second language from books. The teacher at his school had given him six--"Children of the New Forest," "Quentin Durward," "Hereward the Wake," and three others--all paper-backed. They made a new world for Dickie. And since the people in books talked in this nice, if odd, way, he saw no reason why he should not--to a friend whom he could trust. I hope you're not getting bored with all this. You see, I must tell you a little about the kind of boy Dickie was and the kind of way he lived, or you won't understand his adventures. And he had adventures--no end of adventures--as you will see presently. Dickie woke, gay as the spring sun that was trying to look in at him through his grimy windows. "Perhaps he'll do some more to the garden to-day!" he said, and got up very quickly. He got up in the dirty, comfortless room and dressed himself. But in the evening he was undressed by kind, clean hands, and washed in a big bath half-full of hot, silvery water, with soap that smelled like the timber-yard at the end of the street. Because, going along to school, with his silly little head full of Artistic Bird Seeds and flowers rainbow-colored, he had let his crutch slip on a banana-skin and had tumbled down, and a butcher's cart had gone over his poor lame foot. So they took the hurt foot to the hospital, and of course he had to go with it, and the hospital was much more like the heaven he read of in his books than anything he had ever come across before. He noticed that the nurses and the doctors spoke in the kind of words that he had found in his books, and in a voice that he had not found anywhere; so when on the second day a round-faced, smiling lady in a white cap said, "Well, Tommy, and how are we to-day?" he replied-- "My name is far from being Tommy, and I am in Lux Ury and Af Fluence, I thank you, gracious lady." At which the lady laughed and pinched his cheek. When she grew to know him better, and found out where he had learned to talk like that, she produced more books. And from them he learned more new words. They were very nice to him at the hospital, but when they sent him home they put his lame foot into a thick boot with a horrid, clumpy sole and iron things that went up his leg. His aunt and her friends said, "How kind!" but Dickie hated it. The boys at school made game of it--they had got used to the crutch--and that was worse than being called "Old Dot-and-go-one," which was what Dickie had got used to--so used that it seemed almost like a pet name. And on that first night of his return he found that he had been robbed. They had taken his Tinkler from the safe corner in his bed where the ticking was broken, and there was a soft flock nest for a boy's best friend. He knew better than to ask what had become of it. Instead he searched and searched the house in all its five rooms. But he never found Tinkler.