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."
"Thank you very much," said Dickie; "you've been a good friend to me. I hope some day I shall do you a better turn than the little you make out of my boxes and things."
The Jew sold the wrought-iron box that very week for twenty guineas.
And Dickie and Mr. Beale now possessed twenty-seven pounds. New clothes were bought—more furniture. Twenty-two pounds of the money was put in the savings bank. Dickie bought carving tools and went to the Goldsmiths' Institute to learn to use them. The front bedroom was fitted with a bench for Dickie. The back sitting-room was a kennel for the dogs which Mr. Beale instantly began to collect. The front room was a parlor—a real parlor. A decent young woman—Amelia by name—was engaged to come in every day and "do for" them. The clothes they wore were clean; the food they ate was good. Dickie's knowledge of an ordered life in a great house helped him to order life in a house that was little. And day by day they earned their living. The new life was fairly started. And now Dickie felt that he might dare to go back through the three hundred years to all that was waiting for him there.
"But I will only stay a month," he told himself, "a month here and a month there, that will keep things even. Because if I were longer there than I am here I should not be growing up so fast here as I should there. And everything would be crooked. And how silly if I were a grown man in that life and had to come back and be a little boy in this!"
I do not pretend that the idea did not occur to Dickie, "Now that Beale is fairly started he could do very well without me." But Dickie knew better. He dismissed the idea. Besides, Beale had been good to him and he loved him.