"You did—did you? Then I'll tell you what. I'll give you four bob for every one of them you make and bring to me. You might do different coats of arms—see?"
"I was only taught to do one," said Dickie.
Just then a customer came in—a woman with her Sunday dress and a pair of sheets to pawn because her man was out of work and the children were hungry.
"Run along, now," said the Jew, "I've nothing more for you to-day." Dickie flushed and went.
Three days later the crutch clattered in at the pawnbroker's door, and Dickie laid two more little boxes on the counter.
"Here you are," he said. The pawnbroker looked and exclaimed and questioned and wondered, and Dickie went away with eight silver shillings in his pocket, the first coins he had ever carried in his life. They seemed to have been coined in some fairy mint; they were so different from any other money he had ever handled.
Mr. Beale, waiting for him by New Cross Station, put his empty pipe in his pocket and strolled down to meet him. Dickie drew him down a side street and held out the silver. "Two days' work," he said. "We ain't no call to take the road 'cept for a pleasure trip. I got a trade, I 'ave. 'Ow much a week's four bob a day? Twenty-four bob I make it."
"Lor!" said Mr. Beale, with his mouth open.
"Now I tell you what, you get 'old of some more old sofy legs and a stone and a strap to sharpen my knife with. And there we are. Twenty-four shillings a week for a chap an' 'is nipper ain't so dusty, farver, is it? I've thought it all up and settled it all out. So long as the weather holds we'll sleep in the bed with the green curtains, and I'll 'ave a green wood for my workshop, and when the nights get cold we'll rent a room of our very own and live like toffs, won't us?"
The child's eyes were shining with excitement.