To Rosamund Philippa Philips with E. Nesbit’s love...

Dickie lived at New Cross. At least the address was New Cross, but really the house where he lived was one of a row of horrid little houses built on the slope where once green fields ran down the hill...

Dickie fell asleep between clean, coarse sheets in a hard, narrow bed, for which fourpence had been paid. “Put yer clobber under yer bolster, likewise yer boots,” was the last instruction of his new f...

When Lady Talbot leaned over the side of the big bed to awaken Dickie Harding she wished with all her heart that she had just such a little boy of her own; and when Dickie awoke and looked in her kind...

The two crossed triangles of white seeds, in the midst Tinkler and the white seal, lay on the floor of the little empty house, grew dim and faint before Dickie’s eyes, and his eyes suddenly smarted an...

“No,” said Mr. Beale, “we ain’t a-goin’ to crack no more cribs. It’s low⁠—that’s what it is. I quite grant you it’s low. So I s’pose we’ll ’ave to take the road again.” Dickie and he were sitting in t...

And then, as he stood there in the sunshine, he suddenly knew. Having succeeded in dreaming once again the dream which he had so longed to dream, Dickie Harding looked out of the window of the dream-h...

That night Dickie could not sleep. And as he lay awake a great resolve grew strong within him. He would try once more the magic of the moonseeds and the rattle and the white seal, and try to get back ...

In Deptford the seven months had almost gone by; Dickie had worked much, learned much, and earned much. Mr. Beale, a figure of cleanly habit and increasing steadiness, seemed like a plant growing quic...

And now New Cross seemed to go backwards and very far away, its dirty streets, its sordid shifts, its crowds of anxious, unhappy people, who never had quite enough of anything, and Dickie’s home was i...

When Lord Arden and Elfrida and Edred reached the castle and found that Dickie had not come back, the children concluded that Beale had persuaded him to stay the night at the cottage. And Lord Arden t...

There was a lot of talk and a lot of letter-writing before anyone seemed to be able to be sure who was Lord Arden. If the father of Edred and Elfrida had wanted to dispute about it no doubt there woul...

What a triumph for little lame Dickie of Deptford! You think, perhaps, that he was happy as well as proud, for proud he certainly was, with those words and those cheers ringing in his ears. He had jus...