"HE MADE, WITH TRIPLE LINES OF SILVERY SEEDS, A SIX-POINTED STAR"
The house was quite dark now, but a street lamp threw its light into the front room, bare, empty, and dusty. There was a torn newspaper on the floor. He spread a sheet of it out, kneeled by it and shook the moonflower head over it. The seeds came rattling out—dozens and dozens of them. They were bigger than sunflower seeds and flatter and rounder, and they shone like silver, or like the pods of the plant we call honesty.
"Oh, beautiful, beautiful!" said Dickie, letting the smooth shapes slide through his fingers. Have you ever played with mother-of-pearl card counters? The seeds of the moonflower were like those.
He pulled out Tinkler and the seal and laid them on the heap of seeds. And then knew quite suddenly that he was too tired to travel any further that night.
"I'll doss here," he said; "there's plenty papers"—he knew by experience that, as bed-clothes, newspapers are warm, if noisy—"and get on in the morning afore people's up."
He collected all the paper and straw—there was a good deal littered about in the house—and made a heap in the corner, out of the way of the window. He did not feel afraid of sleeping in an empty house, only very lordly and magnificent because he had a whole house to himself. The food still left in his pockets served for supper, and you could drink quite well at the wash-house tap by putting your head under and turning it on very slowly.
And for a final enjoyment he laid out his treasures on the newspaper—Tinkler and the seal in the middle and the pearly counters arranged in patterns round them, circles and squares and oblongs. The seeds lay very flat and fitted close together. They were excellent for making patterns with. And presently he made, with triple lines of silvery seeds, a six-pointed star, something like this—
with the rattle and the seal in the middle, and the light from the street lamp shone brightly on it all.
"That's the prettiest of the lot," said Dickie Harding, alone in the empty house.