"I ought to have cut the string in the train and told the guard—he's a friend of the gardener's," he said, "but I was asleep. I don't know as ever I slep' so sound afore. Like as if I'd had sleepy-stuff—you know. Like they give me at the orspittle."
I should not like to think that Markham had gone so far as to put "sleepy-stuff" in that bottle of milk; but I am afraid she was not very particular, and she may have thought it best to send Dickie to sleep so that he could not betray her or her gardener friend until he was very far away from both of them.
"But why," asked the long-nosed gentleman—"why put boyth in bathketth? Upthetting everybody like thith," he added crossly.
"It was," said Dickie slowly, "a sort of joke. I don't want to go upsetting of people. If you'll lift me down and give me me crutch I'll 'ook it."
But the young ladies would not hear of his hooking it.
"We may keep him, mayn't we, Mr. Rosenberg?" they said; and he judged that Mr. Rosenberg was a kind man or they would not have dared to speak so to him; "let's keep him till closing-time, and then one of us will see him home. He lives in London. He says so."
Dickie had indeed murmured "words to this effect," as policemen call it when they are not quite sure what people really have said.
"Ath you like," said Mr. Rosenberg, "only you muthn't let him interfere with bithneth; thath all."
They took him away to the back of the shop. They were dear girls, and they were very nice to Dickie. They gave him grapes, and a banana, and some Marie biscuits, and they folded sacks for him to lie on.
And Dickie liked them and was grateful to them—and watched his opportunity. Because, however kind people were, there was one thing he had to do—to get back to the Gravesend lodging-house, as his "father" had told him to do.