"Now write what I say: 'Mr. Beale. Dear Sir. Will you please take me on tramp with you? I 'ave no father nor yet mother to be uneasy' (Can you spell 'uneasy'? That's right—you are a scholar!), 'an' I asks you let me come alonger you.' (Got that? All right, I'll stop a bit till you catch up. Then you say) 'If you take me along I promise to give you all what I earns or gets anyhow, and be a good boy, and do what you say. And I shall be very glad if you will. Your obedient servant——' What's your name, eh?"
"Dickie Harding."
"Get it wrote down, then. Done? I'm glad I wasn't born a table to be wrote on. Don't it make yer legs stiff, neither!"
He rolled over, took the paper and read it slowly and with difficulty. Then he folded it and put it in his pocket.
"Now we're square," he said. "That'll stand true and legal in any police-court in England, that will. And don't you forget it."
To the people who live in Rosemary Terrace the words "police-court" are very alarming indeed. Dickie turned a little paler and said, "Why police? I ain't done nothing wrong writin' what you telled me?"
"No, my boy," said the man, "you ain't done no wrong; you done right. But there's bad people in the world—police and such—as might lay it up to me as I took you away against your will. They could put a man away for less than that."
"But it ain't agin my will," said Dickie; "I want to!"
"That's what I say," said the man cheerfully. "So now we're agreed upon it, if you'll step it we'll see about a doss for to-night; and to-morrow we'll sleep in the bed with the green curtains."
"I see that there in a book," said Dickie, charmed. "He Reward the Wake, the last of the English, and I wunnered what it stood for."