"I 'ave to you, I know that," said Dickie, settling his crutch firmly and putting his hand into Mr. Beale's. Mr. Beale looked down at the touch.
"Swelp me!" he said helplessly. Then, "Does it hurt you—walking?"
"Not like it did 'fore I went to the orspittle. They said I'd be able to walk to rights if I wore that there beastly boot. But that 'urts worsen anythink."
"Well," said Mr. Beale, "you sing out when you get tired and I'll give yer a ride."
"Oh, look," said Dickie—"the flowers!"
"They're only weeds," said Beale. They were, in fact, convolvuluses, little pink ones with their tendrils and leaves laid flat to the dry earth by the wayside, and in a water-meadow below the road level big white ones twining among thick-growing osiers and willows.
Dickie filled his hands with the pink ones, and Mr. Beale let him.
"They'll die directly," he said.
"But I shall have them while they're alive," said Dickie, as he had said to the pawnbroker about the moonflowers.
It was a wonderful day. All the country sights and sounds, that you hardly notice because you have known them every year as long as you can remember, were wonderful magic to the little boy from Deptford. The green hedge, the cows looking over them; the tinkle of sheep-bells; the "baa" of the sheep; the black pigs in a sty close to the road, their breathless rooting and grunting and the shiny, blackleaded cylinders that were their bodies; the stubbly fields where barley stood in sheaves—real barley, like the people next door but three gave to their hens; the woodland shadows and the lights of sudden water; shoulders of brown upland pressed against the open sky; the shrill thrill of the skylark's song, "like canary birds got loose"; the splendor of distance—you never see distance in Deptford; the magpie that perched on a stump and cocked a bright eye at the travellers; the thing that rustled a long length through dead leaves in a beech coppice, and was, it appeared, a real live snake—all these made the journey a royal progress to Dickie of Deptford. He forgot that he was lame, forgot that he had run away—a fact that had cost him a twinge or two of fear or conscience earlier in the morning. He was happy as a prince is happy, new-come to his inheritance, and it was Mr. Beale, after all, who was the first to remember that there was a carriage in which a tired little boy might ride.