The opportunity did not come till late in the afternoon, when one of the girls was boiling a kettle on a spirit-lamp, and one had gone out to get cakes in Dickie's honor, which made him uncomfortable, but duty is duty, and over the Gravesend lodging-house the star of duty shone and beckoned. The third young lady and Mr. Rosenberg were engaged in animated explanations with a fair young gentleman about a basket of roses that had been ordered, and had not been sent.
"Cath," Mr. Rosenberg was saying—"cath down enthureth thpeedy delivery."
And the young lady was saying, "I am extremely sorry, sir; it was a misunderstanding."
And to the music of their two voices Dickie edged along close to the grapes and melons, holding on to the shelf on which they lay so as not to attract attention by the tap-tapping of his crutch.
He passed silently and slowly between the rose-filled window and the heap of bananas that adorned the other side of the doorway, turned the corner, threw his arm over his crutch, and legged away for dear life down a sort of covered Arcade; turned its corner and found himself in a wilderness of baskets and carts and vegetables, threaded his way through them, in and out among the baskets, over fallen cabbage-leaves, under horses' noses, found a quiet street, a still quieter archway, pulled out the knife—however his adventure ended he was that knife to the good—and prepared to cut the money out of the belt Mr. Beale had buckled round him.
And the belt was not there! Had he dropped it somewhere? Or had he and Markham, in the hurry of that twilight dressing, forgotten to put it on? He did not know. All he knew was that the belt was not on him, and that he was alone in London, without money, and that at Gravesend his father was waiting for him—waiting, waiting. Dickie knew what it meant to wait.
He went out into the street, and asked the first good-natured-looking loafer he saw the way to Gravesend.
"Way to your grandmother," said the loafer; "don't you come saucing of me."
"But which is the way?" said Dickie.
The man looked hard at him and then pointed with a grimy thumb over his shoulder.