"It ain't so much the little 'uns they jib at," said Mr. Beale, taking his pipe out of his mouth and stretching his legs in the back-yard, "though to my mind they yaps far more aggravatin'. It's the cocker spannel and the Great Danes upsets them."
"The cocker spannel has got rather a persevering bark," said Dickie, looking up at the creeping-jenny in the window-boxes. No flowers would grow in the garden, now trampled hard by the india-rubber-soled feet of many dogs; but Dickie did his best with window-boxes, and every window was underlined by a bright dash of color—creeping-jenny, Brompton stocks, stonecrop, and late tulips, and all bought from the barrows in the High Street, made a brave show.
"I don't say as they're actin' unneighborly in talking about the pleece, so long as they don't do no more than talk," said Beale, with studied fairness and moderation. "What I do say is, I wish we 'ad more elbow-room for 'em. An' as for exercisin' of 'em all every day, like the books say—well, 'ow's one pair of 'ands to do it, let alone legs, and you in another line of business and not able to give yer time to 'em?"
"I wish we had a bigger place, too," said Dickie; "we could afford one now. Not but what I should be sorry to leave the old place, too. We've 'ad some good times here in our time, farver, ain't us?" He sighed with the air of an old man looking back on the long-ago days of youth.
"You lay to it we 'as," said Mr. Beale; "but this 'ere back-yard, it ain't a place where dogs can what you call exercise, not to call it exercise. Now is it?"
"Well, then," said Dickie, "let's get a move on us."
"Ah," said Mr. Beale, laying his pipe on his knee, "now you're talkin'. Get a move on us. That's what I 'oped you'd say. 'Member what I says to you in the winter-time that night Mr. Fuller looked in for his bit o' rent—about me gettin' of the fidgets in my legs? An' I says, 'Why not take to the road a bit, now and again?' an' you says, 'We'll see about that, come summer.' And 'ere is come summer. What if we was to take the road a bit, mate—where there's room to stretch a chap's legs without kickin' a dog or knockin' the crockery over? There's the ole pram up-stairs in the back room as lively as ever she was—only wants a little of paint to be fit for a dook, she does. An' 'ere's me, an' 'ere's you, an' 'ere's the pick of the dogs. Think of it, matey—the bed with the green curtains, and the good smell of the herrings you toasts yerself and the fire you makes outer sticks, and the little starses a-comin' out and a-winkin' at you, and all so quiet, a-smokin' yer pipe till it falls outer yer mouth with sleepiness, and no fear o' settin' the counterpin afire. What you say, matey, eh?"
Dickie looked lovingly at the smart back of the little house—its crisp white muslin blinds, its glimpses of neat curtains, its flowers; and then another picture came to him—he saw the misty last light fainting beyond the great shoulders of the downs, and the "little starses" shining so bright and new through the branches of fir trees that interlaced above, a sweet-scented bed of soft fallen brown pine-needles.
"What say, mate?" Mr. Beale repeated; and Dickie answered—
"Soon as ever you like's what I say. And what I say is, the sooner the better."