"I draws water with my arms, not my legs," said Dickie cheerfully. "There's a blue mug in the wash-house window-ledge," said the old man. "Fetch me a drop when you've had your drink, my lad." Of course, Dickie's manners were too good for him to drink first. He drew up the dripping oaken bucket from the cool darkness of the well, fetched the mug, and offered it brimming to the old man. Then he drank, and looked at the garden ablaze with flowers--blush-roses and damask roses, and sweet-williams and candytuft, white lilies and yellow lilies, pansies, larkspur, poppies, bergamot, and sage. It was just like a play at the Greenwich Theatre, Dickie thought. He had seen a scene just like that, where the old man sat in the sun and the Prodigal returned. Dickie would not have been surprised to see Beale run up the brick path and throw himself on his knees, exclaiming, "Father, it is I--your erring but repentant son! Can you forgive me? If a lifetime of repentance can atone ..." and so on. If Dickie had been Beale he would certainly have made the speech, beginning, "Father, it is I." But as he was only Dickie, he said-- "Your name's Beale, ain't it?" "It might be," old Beale allowed. "I seen your son in London. 'E told me about yer garden." "I should a thought 'e'd a-forgot the garden same as 'e's forgot me," said the old man. "'E ain't forgot you, not 'e," said Dickie; "'e's come to see you, an 'e's waiting outside now to know if you'd like to see 'im." "Then 'e oughter know better," said the old man, and shouted in a thin, high voice, "Jim, Jim, come along in this minute!" Even then Beale didn't act a bit like the prodigal in the play. He just unlatched the gate without looking at it--his hand had not forgotten the way of it, for all it was so long since he had passed through that gate. And he walked slowly and heavily up the path and said, "Hullo, dad!--how goes it?" And the old man looked at him with his eyes half shut and said, "Why, it _is_ James--so it is," as if he had expected it to be some one quite different. And they shook hands, and then Beale said, "The garden's looking well." And the old man owned that the garden 'ud do all right if it wasn't for the snails. That was all Dickie heard, for he thought it polite to go away. Of course, they could not be really affectionate with a stranger about. So he shouted from the gate something about "back presently," and went off along the cart track towards Arden Castle and looked at it quite closely. It was the most beautiful and interesting thing he had ever seen. But he did not see the children. When he went back the old man was cooking steak over the kitchen fire, and Beale was at the sink straining summer cabbage in a colander, as though he had lived there all his life and never anywhere else. He was in his shirt-sleeves too, and his coat and hat hung behind the back-door.