Page:Hardings luck - nesbit.djvu/205

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DICKIE LEARNS MANY THINGS
163

where he didn't wish to be—he might be any one whom he did not wish to be.

"I'll never try it again," he said: "if I get out of this I'll stick to the wood-carving, and not go venturing about any more among dreams and things."

He got up and looked out of a narrow window. From it he saw a garden, but it was not a garden he had ever seen before. It had marble seats, balustrades, and the damp dews of autumn hung chill about its almost unleafed trees.

"It might have been worse; it might have been a prison yard," he told himself. "Come, keep your heart up. Wherever I've come to it's an adventure."

He turned back to the room and looked for his clothes. There were no clothes there. But the shirt he had on was like the shirt he had slept in at the beautiful house.

He turned to open the door, and there was no door. All was dark, even panelling. He was not shut in a room but in a box. Nonsense, boxes did not have beds in them and windows.

And then suddenly he was no longer the clever person who had managed everything so admirably—who was living two lives with such credit in both, who was managing a grown man for that grown man's good; but just a little boy rather badly frightened.

The little shirt was the only thing that helped, and that only gave him the desperate courage to beat on the panels and shout, "Nurse! Nurse! Nurse——!"