whether you think that you are the only child who can do this?
Believe me, you are not. Parents and guardians would be surprised to learn that dear little Charlie has a language quite different from the one he uses to them—a language in which he talks to the cook and the housemaid. And yet another language spoken with the real accent too—in which he converses with the boot-boy and the grooms.
Dickie, however, had learned his second language from books. The teacher at his school had given him six—"Children of the New Forest," "Quentin Durward," "Hereward the Wake," and three others—all paper-backed. They made a new world for Dickie. And since the people in books talked in this nice, if odd, way, he saw no reason why he should not—to a friend whom he could trust.
I hope you're not getting bored with all this?
You see, I must tell you a little about the kind of boy Dickie was and the kind of way he lived, or you won't understand his adventures. And he had adventures—no end of adventures—as you will see presently.
Dickie woke, gay as the spring sun that was trying to look in at him through his grimy windows.
"Perhaps he'll do some more to the garden to-day!" he said, and got up very quickly.
He got up in the dirty, comfortless room and dressed himself. But in the evening he was
