"Pretty, ain't they?" one black-coated person would say to another. And the other would reply--
It was no good. Dickie was tired, and the flowers were beginning to droop. He turned to go home, when a sudden thought brought the blood to his face. He turned again quickly and went straight to the pawnbroker's. You may be quite sure he had learned the address on the card by heart.
He went boldly into the shop, which had three handsome gold balls hanging out above its door, and in its window all sorts of pretty things--rings, and chains, and brooches, and watches, and china, and silk handkerchiefs, and concertinas.
"Well, young man," said the stout gentleman behind the counter, "what can we do for you?"
"I want to pawn my moonflowers," said Dickie.
The stout gentleman roared with laughter, and slapped a stout leg with a stout hand.
"Well, that's a good 'un!" he said, "as good a one as ever I heard. Why, you little duffer, they'd be dead long before you came back to redeem them, that's certain."
"You'd have them while they were alive, you know," said Dickie gently.
"What are they? Don't seem up to much. Though I don't know that I ever saw a flower just like them, come to think of it," said the pawnbroker, who lived in a neat villa at Brockley and went in for gardening in a gentlemanly, you-needn't-suppose-I-can't-afford-a-real-gardener-if-I-like sort of way.
"They're moonflowers," said Dickie, "and I want to pawn them and then get something else out with the money."
"Got the ticket?" said the gentleman, cleverly seeing that he meant "get out of pawn."
"Yes," said Dickie; "and it's my own Tinkler that my daddy gave me before he died, and my aunt Missa propagated it when I was in hospital."
"All right," he said at last; "hand over the flowers. They are not so bad," he added, more willing to prize them now that they were his (things do look different when they are your own, don't they?). "Here, Humphreys, put these in a jug of water till I go home. And get this out."
[Illustration: "'HERE, HUMPHREYS, PUT THESE IN A JUG OF WATER TILL I GO HOME'"
A pale young man in spectacles appeared from a sort of dark cave at the back of the shop, took flowers and ticket, and was swallowed up again in the darkness of the cave.