which if you have not heard it I will now Pur seed to relite."
"You're a rum little kid, I don't think," said the man. "Where do you learn such talk?"
"It's the wye they talk in books," said Dickie, suddenly returning to the language of his aunt. "You bein' a toff I thought you'd unnerstand. My mistike. No 'fence."
"Mean to say you can talk like a book when you like, and cut it off short like that?"
"I can Con-vers like Lords and Lydies," said Dickie, in the accents of the gutter, "and your noble benefacteriness made me seek to express my feelinks with the best words at me Command."
"Fond of books?"
"I believe you," said Dickie, and there were no more awkward pauses.
When the pale young man came back with something wrapped in a bit of clean rag, he said a whispered word or two to the pawnbroker, who unrolled the rag and looked closely at the rattle.
"So it is," he said, "and it's a beauty too, let alone anything else."
"Isn't he?" said Dickie, touched by this praise of his treasured Tinkler.
"I've got something else here that's got the same crest as your rattle."
"Crest?" said Dickie; "isn't that what you wear on your helmet in the heat and press of the Tower Nament?"
