But they seemed very poor and very little of them when they were dumped down in the front room. The bed especially looked far from its best—a mere heap of loose iron.
"And we ain't got our droring-room suit, neither," said Mr. Beale. "Lady's and gent's easy-chairs, four hoccasionals, pianner, and foomed oak booreau."
"Curtains," said Dickie—"white curtains for the parlor and short blinds everywhere else. I'll go and get 'em while you clean the winders. That old shirt of mine. It won't hang through another washing. Clean 'em with that."
"You don't give your orders, neither," said Beale contentedly.
The curtains and a penn'orth of tacks, a hammer borrowed from a neighbor, and an hour's cheerful work completed the fortification of the Englishman's house against the inquisitiveness of passers-by. But the landlord frowned anxiously as he went past the house.
"Don't like all that white curtain," he told himself; "not much be'ind it, if you ask me. People don't go to that extreme in Nottingham lace without there's something to hide—a house full of emptiness, most likely."
Inside Dickie was telling a very astonished Mr. Beale that there was money buried in the garden.
"It was give me," said he, "for learning of something—and we've got to get it up so as no one sees us. I can't think of nothing but build a chicken-house and then dig inside of it. I wish I was cleverer. Here Ward would have thought of something first go off."
"Don't you worry," said Beale; "you're clever enough for this poor world. You're all right. Come on out and show us where you put it. Just peg with yer foot on the spot, looking up careless at the sky."
They went out. And Dickie put his foot on the cross he had scratched with the broken bit of plate. It was close to the withered stalk of the moonflower.