Harding’s Luck quotes

All those good fields and happy gardens are built over now.

It is as though some wicked giant had taken a big brush full of yellow ochre paint, and another full of mud color, and had painted out the green in streaks of dull yellow and filthy brown; and the brown is the roads and the yellow is the houses.

Miles and miles and miles of them, and not a green thing to be seen except the cabbages in the greengrocers’ shops, and here and there some poor trails of creeping-jenny drooping from a dirty windowsill.

And when his aunt sold the poor remains of the hutch to a man with a barrow who was ready to buy anything, and who took also the pails and the shovels, giving threepence for the lot,

Dickie was almost as unhappy as though the hutch had really held a furry friend.

And he hated the man who took the hutch away, all the more because there were empty rabbit-skins hanging sadly from the back of the barrow.

“So you shall,” said Mr. Beale; “a reg’ler wash all over—this very night. I always like a wash meself. Some blokes think it pays to be dirty. But it don’t.

If you’re clean they say ‘Honest Poverty,’ an’ if you’re dirty they say ‘Serve you right.’

We’ll get a pail or something this very night.”

I will not pretend that he was not frightened. He was, very.

But he was more brave than he was frightened, which is the essence of bravery, after all.

He found it difficult to breathe quietly, and his heart beat so loudly that he felt almost sure that if any people were awake in the house they would hear it, even upstairs in their beds.

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.

“Oh, Nurse,” he cried, clinging to her with all his might.

“I dreamed that I was lame! And I thought it was true. And it isn’t!⁠—it isn’t!⁠—it isn’t!”

Quite soon Dickie was able to walk downstairs and out into the garden along the grassy walks and long alleys where fruit trees trained over trellises made such pleasant green shade, and even to try to learn to play at bowls on the long bowling-green …

but he could leap up and down the stairs three at a time, he could run in the arched alleys—run and jump as he had seen other children do, and as he had never thought to do himself.

Imagine what you would feel if you had lived wingless all your life among people who could fly.

That is how lame people feel among us who can walk and run. And now Dickie was lame no more.

“Not yet,” said the nurse surprisingly; “ ’tis not easy to bring those we love from one dream to another.”

“Didst never hear that all life is a dream?” she asked him.

“But thou shalt go. Heaven forbid that one of thy race should fail a friend. Look! there are fresh sheets on thy bed. Lie still and think of him that was good to thee.”

“Thank you, my lad,” said the pawnbroker. “I’ll raise them in gentle heat.”

“I think they grow best by moonlight,” said Dickie.

So he came to Gravesend and the common lodging-house, and a weary, sad, and very anxious man rose up from his place by the fire when the clickety-clack of the crutch sounded on the threshold.

“Then I’m glad I came,” said Dickie. But in his heart he was not glad. In his heart he longed for that pleasant house where he was the young master, and was not lame any more.

But in his soul he was glad, because the soul is greater than the heart, and knows greater things.

And now Dickie loved Beale more than ever, because for him he had sacrificed his dream. So he had gained something. Because loving people is the best thing in the world—better even than being loved.

But in his soul he was glad, because the soul is greater than the heart, and knows greater things. And now Dickie loved Beale more than ever, because for him he had sacrificed his dream. So he had gained something.

Because loving people is the best thing in the world⁠—better even than being loved.

Just think this out, will you, and see if I am not right.

“I’ve found the way back,” he said; “I don’t know which is the dream and which is real—but you know.”

“Yes,” said the old nurse, “I know. The one is as real as the other.”

He sprang out of bed and went leaping round the room, jumping on to chairs and off them, running and dancing.

“What ails the child?” the nurse grumbled; “get thy hose on, for shame, taking a chill as like as not. What ails thee to act so?”

“It’s the not being lame,” Dickie explained, coming to a standstill by the window that looked out on the good green garden.

“You don’t know how wonderful it seems, just at first, you know, not to be lame.”

He lived and learned, and felt more and more that this was the life to which he really belonged.

And days and weeks and months went by and nothing happened, and that is the happiest thing that can happen to anyone who is already happy.

Then one night the nurse said—

Mr. Beale was confused by the two desires which make it difficult to confess anything truthfully—the desire to tell the worst of oneself and the desire to do full justice to oneself at the same time.

It is so very hard not to blacken the blackness, or whiten the whiteness, when one comes to trying to tell the truth about oneself.

“But I been a beast all the same,” said Mr. Beale helplessly.

“But in the dream … you know.”

“Dreams is queer things,” said the woman. “And,” she added, “least said is soonest mended.”

“Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut’s a good motto,” said she, nodded again, and turned resolutely away.

“Dreams is queer things,” said the woman. “And,” she added, “least said is soonest mended.”

“Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut’s a good motto,” said she, nodded again, and turned resolutely away.

“Not very civil, I don’t think,” said Beale, “considerin’—”

Dickie slept with True in his arms, and it was like a draught of soft magic elixir to lie once more in the still, cool night and look up at the stars through the trees.

“Can’t think why they ever invented houses,” he said, and then he fell asleep.

By short stages, enjoying every step of every day’s journey, they went slowly and at their ease through the garden-land of Kent. Dickie loved every minute of it, every leaf in the hedge, every blade of grass by the roadside.

All the things that he had hated in this modern life, when he was Dickie of Deptford, ceased to trouble him now that he was Richard Arden.

For the difference between being rich and poor is as great as the difference between being warm and cold.

After that first day a sort of shyness came over the three children, and they spoke no more of the strange adventures they had had together, but just played at all the ordinary everyday games, till they almost forgot that there was any magic, had …

Hemans’. I’ll try.” And he got a pencil and paper and try he did, his very hardest, be sure. But there are some things that the best and bravest cannot do. And the thing Edred couldn’t do was to make poetry, however bad.

He simply couldn’t do it, any more than you can fly. It wasn’t in him, any more than wings are on you.

“Oh, Mouldiwarp, you said we must Not have any more magic. But we trust You won’t be hard on us, because Dickie is lost And we don’t know how to find him.”

“You will never tell your father this,” the low, beautiful voice went on; “you must not even tell your sister till you have rescued Dickie and made the sacrifice. This is the one supreme chance of all your life.

Every soul has one such chance, a chance to be perfectly unselfish, absolutely noble and true.

You can take this chance. But you must take it alone. No one can help you. No one can advise you. And you must keep the nobler thought in your own heart till it is a noble deed.

Yet what he said was true.

There is so often room in our hearts for two tunes at a time.

“I don’t want to be. You ought to be, sir. You’ve been so kind to me,” he said.

The redheaded man and the woman were tried at the assizes and punished. If you ask me how they knew about the caves which none of the country people seemed to know of, I can only answer that I don’t know.

Only I know that everyone you know knows lots of things that you don’t know they know.

When they all went a week later to explore the caves, they found a curious arrangement of brickwork and cement and clay, shutting up a hole through which the stream had evidently once flowed out into the open air. It now flowed away into darkness.

And, like Lord Arden’s very own son, Dickie lived at the house in Arden Castle, and grew to love it more and more. He no longer wanted to get away from these present times to those old days when James the First was King.

The times you are born in are always more homelike than any other times can be.

When Dickie lived miserably at Deptford he always longed to go to those old times, as a man who is unhappy at home may wish to travel to other countries. But a man who is happy in his home does not want to leave it.

an Arden!” he rushed towards the swaying, staggering melee. He reached it just as the leader of the attacking party had hewn his way through the Arden men and taken his first step on the flagged path of the courtyard.

The first step was his last.

He stopped, a big, burly fellow in a leathern coat and steel round cap, and looked, bewildered, at the little figure coming at him with all the fire and courage of the Ardens burning in his blue eyes.