"Dickie," she said, "how would you like to stay here and be my little boy?"
"I'd like it right enough," said he, "only I got to go back to father."
"'E won't," said Dickie, with certainty, "an' besides, there's Tinkler."
"Well, you're to stay here and be my little boy till we find out where father is. We shall let the police know. They're sure to find him."
"The pleece!" Dickie cried in horror. "Why, father, 'e ain't done nothing."
"No, no, of course not," said the lady in a hurry; "but the police know all sorts of things—about where people are, I know, and what they're doing—even when they haven't done anything."
"The pleece knows a jolly sight too much," said Dickie, in gloom.
And now all Dickie's little soul was filled with one longing; all his little brain awake to one only thought: the police were to be set on the track of Beale, the man whom he called father; the man who had been kind to him, had wheeled him in a perambulator for miles and miles through enchanted country; the man who had bought him a little coat "to put on o' nights if it was cold or wet"; the man who had shown him the wonderful world to which he awakens who has slept in the bed with the green curtains.
The lady's house was more beautiful than anything he had ever imagined—yet not more beautiful than certain things that he almost imagined that he remembered. The lady was better than beautiful, she was dear. Her eyes were the eyes to which it is good to laugh—her arms were the arms in which it is good to cry. The tree-dotted parkland was to Dickie the Land of Heart's Desire.