"Is this the dream? Or was the other the dream?"
And it seemed a foolish question—with the feel of the coarse sheets and the smell of the close room, and Mr. Beale's voice saying, "Rouse up, nipper, there's sossingers for breakfast."
CHAPTER V
"TO GET YOUR OWN LIVING"
"No," said Mr. Beale, "we ain't a-goin' to crack no more cribs. It's low—that's what it is. I quite grant you it's low. So I s'pose we'll 'ave to take the road again."
Dickie and he were sitting in the sunshine on a sloping field. They had been sitting there all the morning, and Dickie had told Mr. Beale all his earthly adventures from the moment the redheaded man had lifted him up to the window of Talbot Court to the time when he had come in by the open door of the common lodging-house.
"What a nipper it is, though!" said Mr. Beale regretfully. "For the burgling, I mean—sharp—clever—no one to touch him. But I don't cotton to it myself," he added quickly, "not the burgling, I don't. You're always liable to get yourself into trouble over it, one way or the other—that's the worst of it. I don't know how it is," he ended pensively, "but somehow it always leads to trouble."
Dickie picked up seven straws from among the stubble and idly plaited them together; the nurse had taught him this in the dream when he was still weak from the fever.