So then they had dinner, when the old man had set down the frying-pan expressly to shake hands with Dickie, saying, "So this is the lad you told me about. Yes, yes." It was a very nice dinner, with cold gooseberry pastry as well as the steak and vegetables. The kitchen was pleasant and cozy though rather dark, on account of the white climbing rose that grew round the window. After dinner the men sat in the sun and smoked, and Dickie occupied himself in teaching the spaniel and True that neither of them was a dog who deserved to be growled at. Dickie had just thrown back his head in a laugh at True's sulky face and stiffly planted paws, when he felt the old man's dry, wrinkled hand under his chin. "Let's 'ave a look at you," he said, and peered closely at the child. "Where'd you get that face, eh? What did you say your name was?" "Harding's his name," said Beale. "Dickie Harding." "Dickie _Arden_, I should a-said if you'd asked _me_," said the old man. "Seems to me it's a reg'lar Arden face he's got. But my eyes ain't so good as wot they was. What d'you say to stopping along of me a bit, my boy? There's room in the cottage for all five of us. My son James here tells me you've been's good as a son to him." "I'd love it," said Dickie. So that was settled. There were two bedrooms for Beale and his father, and Dickie slept in a narrow, whitewashed slip of a room that had once been a larder. The brown spaniel and True slept on the rag hearth-rug in the kitchen. And everything was as cozy as cozy could be. "We can send for any of the dawgs any minute if we feel we can't stick it without 'em," said Beale, smoking his pipe in the front garden. "You mean to stay a long time, then," said Dickie. "I dunno. You see, I was born and bred 'ere. The air tastes good, don't it? An' the water's good. Didn't you notice the tea tasted quite different from what it does anywhere else? That's the soft water, that is. An' the old chap.... Yes--and there's one or two other things--yes--I reckon us'll stop on 'ere a bit." And Dickie was very glad. For now he was near Arden Castle, and could see it any time that he chose to walk a couple of hundred yards and look down. And presently he would see Edred and Elfrida. Would they know him? That was the question. Would they remember that he and they had been cousins and friends when James the First was King? CHAPTER IX KIDNAPPED AND now New Cross seemed to go backwards and very far away, its dirty streets, its sordid shifts, its crowds of anxious, unhappy people, who never had quite enough of anything, and Dickie's home was in a pleasant cottage from whose windows you could see great green rolling downs, and the smooth silver and blue of the sea, and from whose door you stepped, not on to filthy pavements, but on to a neat brick path, leading between beds glowing with flowers.