Harding's luck. Nesbit Edith

young man," said the stout gentleman behind the counter, "what can we do for you?"

      "I want to pawn my moonflowers," said Dickie.

      The stout gentleman roared with laughter, and slapped a stout leg with a stout hand.

      "Well, that's a good 'un!" he said, "as good a one as ever I heard. Why, you little duffer, they'd be dead long before you came back to redeem them, that's certain."

      "You'd have them while they were alive, you know," said Dickie gently.

      "What are they? Don't seem up to much. Though I don't know that I ever saw a flower just like them, come to think of it," said the pawnbroker, who lived in a neat villa at Brockley and went in for gardening in a gentlemanly, you-needn't-suppose-I-can't-afford-a-real-gardener-if-I-like sort of way.

      "They're moonflowers," said Dickie, "and I want to pawn them and then get something else out with the money."

      "Got the ticket?" said the gentleman, cleverly seeing that he meant "get out of pawn."

      "Yes," said Dickie; "and it's my own Tinkler that my daddy gave me before he died, and my aunt Missa propagated it when I was in hospital."

      The man looked carefully at the card.

      "All right," he said at last; "hand over the flowers. They are not so bad," he added, more willing to prize them now that they were his (things do look different when they are your own, don't they?). "Here, Humphreys, put these in a jug of water till I go home. And get this out."

      A pale young man in spectacles appeared from a sort of dark cave at the back of the shop, took flowers and ticket, and was swallowed up again in the darkness of the cave.

      "Oh, thank you!" said Dickie fervently. "I shall live but to repay your bounteous gen'rosity."

      "None of your cheek," said the pawnbroker, reddening, and there was an awkward pause.

      "It's not cheek; I meant it," said Dickie at last, speaking very earnestly. "You'll see, some of these days. I read an interesting Nar Rataive about a Lion the King of Beasts and a Mouse, that small and Ty Morous animal, which if you have not heard it I will now Pur seed to relite."

      "You're a rum little kid, I don't think," said the man. "Where do you learn such talk?"

      "It's the wye they talk in books," said Dickie, suddenly returning to the language of his aunt. "You bein' a toff I thought you'd unnerstand. My mistike. No 'fense."

      "Mean to say you can talk like a book when you like, and cut it off short like that?"

      "I can Con-vers like Lords and Lydies," said Dickie, in the accents of the gutter, "and your noble benefacteriness made me seek to express my feelinks with the best words at me Command."

      "Fond of books?"

      "I believe you," said Dickie, and there were no more awkward pauses.

      When the pale young man came back with something wrapped in a bit of clean rag, he said a whispered word or two to the pawnbroker, who unrolled the rag and looked closely at the rattle.

      "So it is," he said, "and it's a beauty too, let alone anything else."

      "Isn't he?" said Dickie, touched by this praise of his treasured Tinkler.

      "I've got something else here that's got the same crest as your rattle."

      "Crest?" said Dickie; "isn't that what you wear on your helmet in the heat and press of the Tower Nament?"

      The pawnbroker explained that crests no longer live exclusively on helmets, but on all sorts of odd things. And the queer little animal, drawn in fine scratches on the side of the rattle, was, it seemed, a crest.

      "Here, Humphreys," he added, "give it a rub up and bring that seal here."

      The pale young man did something to Tinkler with some pinky powder and a brush and a wash-leather, while his master fitted together the two halves of a broken white cornelian.

      "It came out of a seal," he said, "and I don't mind making you a present of it."

      "Oh!" said Dickie, "you are a real rightern." And he rested his crutch against the counter expressly to clasp his hands in ecstasy as boys in books did.

      "My young man shall stick it together with cement," the pawnbroker went on, "and put it in a little box. Don't you take it out till to-morrow and it'll be stuck fast. Only don't go trying to seal with it, or the sealing-wax will melt the cement. It'll bring you luck, I shouldn't wonder."

      (It did; and such luck as the kind pawnbroker never dreamed of. But that comes further on in the story.)

      Dickie left the shop without his moonflowers, indeed, but with his Tinkler now whitely shining, and declared to be "real silver, and mind you take care of it, my lad," his white cornelian seal carefully packed in a strong little cardboard box with metal corners. Also a broken-backed copy of "Ingoldsby Legends" and one of "Mrs. Markham's English History," which had no back at all. "You must go on trying to improve your mind," said the pawnbroker fussily. He was very pleased with himself for having been so kind. "And come back and see me – say next month."

      "I will," said Dickie. "A thousand blessings from a grateful heart. I will come back. I say, you are good! Thank you, thank you – I will come back next month, and tell you everything I have learned from the Perru Sal of your books."

      "Perusal," said the pawnbroker – "that's the way to pernounce it. Good-bye, my man, and next month."

      But next month found Dickie in a very different place from the pawnbroker's shop, and with a very different person from the pawnbroker who in his rural retirement at Brockley gardened in such a gentlemanly way.

      Dickie went home – his aunt was still out. His books told him that treasure is best hidden under loose boards, unless of course your house has a secret panel, which his had not. There was a loose board in his room, where the man "saw to" the gas. He got it up, and pushed his treasures as far in as he could – along the rough, crumbly surface of the lath and plaster.

      Not a moment too soon. For before the board was coaxed quite back into its place the voice of the aunt screamed up.

      "Come along down, can't you? I can hear you pounding about up there. Come along down and fetch me a ha'porth o' wood – I can't get the kettle to boil without a fire, can I?"

      When Dickie came down his aunt slightly slapped him, and he took the halfpenny and limped off obediently.

      It was a very long time indeed before he came back. Because before he got to the shop with no window to it, but only shutters that were put up at night, where the wood and coal were sold, he saw a Punch and Judy show. He had never seen one before, and it interested him extremely. He longed to see it unpack itself and display its wonders, and he followed it through more streets than he knew; and when he found that it was not going to unpack at all, but was just going home to its bed in an old coach-house, he remembered the fire-wood; and the halfpenny clutched tight and close in his hand seemed to reproach him warmly.

      He looked about him, and knew that he did not at all know where he was. There was a tall, thin, ragged man lounging against a stable door in the yard where the Punch and Judy show lived. He took his clay pipe out of his mouth to say —

      "What's up, matey? Lost your way?"

      Dickie explained.

      "It's Lavender Terrace where I live," he ended – "Lavender Terrace, Rosemary Street, Deptford."

      "I'm going that way myself," said the man, getting away from the wall. "We'll go back by the boat if you like. Ever been on the boat?"

      "No," said Dickie.

      "Like to?"

      "Don't mind if I do," said Dickie.

      It was very pleasant with the steamboat going along in such a hurry, pushing the water out of the way, and puffing and blowing, and something beating inside it like a giant's heart. The wind blew freshly, and the ragged man found a sheltered corner behind the funnel. It was so sheltered, and the wind had been so strong that Dickie felt sleepy. When he said, "'Ave I bin asleep?" the steamer was stopping at a pier at a strange