thought: the police were to be set on the track of Beale, the man whom he called father; the man who had been kind to him, had wheeled him in a perambulator for miles and miles through enchanted country; the man who had bought him a little coat "to put on o' nights if it was cold or wet"; the man who had shown him the wonderful world to which he awakens who has slept in the bed with the green curtains.
The lady's house was more beautiful than anything he had ever imagined—yet not more beautiful than certain things that he almost imagined that he remembered. The lady was better than beautiful, she was dear. Her eyes were the eyes to which it is good to laugh—her arms were the arms in which it is good to cry. The tree-dotted parkland was to Dickie the Land of Heart's Desire.
But father Beale who had been kind, whom Dickie loved! . . .
The lady left him alone with a book, beautiful beyond his dreams—three great volumes with pictures of things that had happened and been since the days of Hereward himself. The author's charming name was Green, and recalled curtains and nights under the stars.
But even those beautiful pictures could not keep Dickie's thoughts from Mr. Beale: "father" by adoption and love. If the police were set to find out " where he was and what he was doing?" . . . Somehow or other Dickie must get to Gravesend, to that house where there had been a bath, or something like it, in a pail, and where kindly
