His aunt and her friends said, "How kind!" but Dickie hated it. The boys at school made game of it—they had got used to the crutch—and that was worse than being called "Old Dot-and-go-one," which was what Dickie had got used to—so used that it seemed almost like a pet name.
And on that first night of his return he found that he had been robbed. They had taken his Tinkler from the safe corner in his bed where the ticking was broken, and there was a soft flock nest for a boy's best friend.
He knew better than to ask what had become of it. Instead he searched and searched the house in all its five rooms. But he never found Tinkler.
Instead he found next day, when his aunt had gone out shopping, a little square of cardboard at the back of the dresser drawer, among the dirty dusters and clothes pegs and string and corks and novelettes.
It was a pawnticket—"Rattle. One shilling."
Dickie knew all about pawntickets. You, of course, don't. Well, ask some grown-up person to explain; I haven't time. I want to get on with the story.
Until he had found that ticket he had not been able to think of anything else. He had not even cared to think about his garden and wonder whether the Artistic Bird Seeds had come up parrot-coloured. He had been a very long time in the hospital, and it was August now. And the nurses had assured him that the seeds
