"I've known that a long time," said Dickie, gravely watching the candle flicker on the bare mantel-shelf. "I didn't mean no good to you, not at first I didn't," said Beale, "when you wrote on the sole of my boot. I'd bought that bit of paper and pencil a-purpose. There!" "You ain't done me no 'arm, anyway," said Dickie. "No--I know I ain't. 'Cause why? 'Cause I took to you the very first day. I allus been kind to you--you can't say I ain't." Mr. Beale was confused by the two desires which make it difficult to confess anything truthfully--the desire to tell the worst of oneself and the desire to do full justice to oneself at the same time. It is so very hard not to blacken the blackness, or whiten the whiteness, when one comes to trying to tell the truth about oneself. "But I been a beast all the same," said Mr. Beale helplessly. "Oh, stow it!" Dickie said; "now you've told me, it's all square." "You won't keep a down on me for it?" "Now, should I?" said Dickie, exasperated and very sleepy. "Now all is open as the day and we can pursue our career as honorable men and comrades in all high emprise. I mean," he explained, noticing Mr. Beale's open mouth and eyes more lobster-like than ever--"I mean that's all right, farver, and you see it don't make any difference to me. I knows you're straight now, even if it didn't begin just like that. Let's get to bed, shan't us?" Mr. Beale dreamed that he was trying to drown Dickie in a pond full of stewed eels. Dickie didn't dream at all. * * * * * You may wonder why, since going to the beautiful other world took no time and was so easy, Dickie did not do it every night, or even at odd times during the day. Well, the fact was he dared not. He loved the other life so much that he feared that, once again there, he might not have the courage to return to Mr. Beale and Deptford and the feel of dirty clothes and the smell of dust-bins. It was no light thing to come back from that to this. And now he made a resolution--that he would not set out the charm of Tinkler and seal and moon-seeds until he had established Mr. Beale in an honorable calling and made a life for him in which he could be happy. A great undertaking for a child? Yes. But then Dickie was not an ordinary child, or none of these adventures would ever have happened to him. The pawnbroker, always a good friend to Dickie, had the wit to see that the child was not lying when he said that the box and the bag and the gold pieces had been given to him. He changed the gold pieces stamped with the image of Queen Elizabeth for others stamped with the image of Queen Victoria. And he gave five pounds for the wrought-iron box, and owned that he should make a little--a very little--out of it. "And if your grand society friends give you any more treasures, you know the house to come to--the fairest house in the trade, though I say it."