Page:Hardings luck - nesbit.djvu/227

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DICKIE LEARNS MANY THINGS
185

changed ever and again. And Dickie of Deptford has the honour of the house of Arden to uphold there as here, then as now."

"I shall call myself Arden when I go back," said Dickie proudly.

"Not yet," she said; "wait."

"If you say so," said Dickie rather discontentedly.

"The time is not ripe for thee to take up all thine honours there," she said. "And now, dear lamb, since thy tutor is imagining unkind things in his heart for thee, go quickly. Set out thy moon-seeds and, when thou hearest the voices, say, 'I would see both Mouldiwarps,' and thou shalt see them both."

"Thank you," said Dickie. "I do want to see them both."

See them he did, in a blue-grey mist in which he could feel nothing solid, not even the ground under his feet or the touch of his clenched fingers against his palms.

They were very white, the Mouldiwarps, outlined distinctly against the grey blueness, and the Mouldiwarp he had seen in that wonderful adventure in the far country smiled, as well as a mole can, and said—

"Thou'rt a fair sprig of de old tree, Muster Dickie, so 'e be," in the thick speech of the peasant people round about Talbot House where Dickie had once been a little burglar.

"He is indeed a worthy scion of the great house we serve," said the other Mouldiwarp with precise and gentle utterance. "As Mouldierwarp