Page:Hardings luck - nesbit.djvu/217

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DICKIE LEARNS MANY THINGS
175

had one. And he had borrowed it once. And the assistant master had had a larger one of the same kind. It was horrible to him, this intrusion of the scientific attainments of the ugly times in which he was born into the beautiful times that he had grown to love.

"Oh, stow it!" he said. "I know now it's all a silly dream. But it's not worth while to pretend I don't know a Kodak when I see it. That's a Brownie."

"If you've dreamed about our time," said Elfrida. . . . "Did you ever dream of fire carriages and fire-boats, and——"

Richard explained that he was not a baby, that he knew all about railways and steamboats and the triumphs of civilisation. And added that Kent made 615 against Derbyshire last Thursday. Edred and Elfrida began to ask questions. Dickie was much too full of his own questionings to answer theirs.

"I shan't tell you anything more," he said. "But I'll help you to get even with old Parrot-nose." And suggested shovelling the snow off the roof into the room of that dismal tyrant through the skylight conveniently lighting it.

But Edred wanted that written down—about Kent and Derbyshire—so that they might see, when they got back to their own times, whether it was true. And Dickie found he had a bit of paper in his doublet on which to write it. It was a bill—he had had it in his hand when he made the magic moon-seed pattern, and it had unaccountably come with him. It was a bill for