“Good morning, Sir,” said Nurse Beaton, bustling into the verandah from the nursery.  “He’s as mad as ever on swords and fighting, you see.  It’s a soldier he’ll be, the lamb.  He’s taken to making that black orderly pull out his sword when he’s in uniform.  Makes him wave and jab it about.  Gives me the creeps—­with his black face and white eyes and all.  You won’t encourage the child at it, will you, Sir?  And his poor Mother the gentlest soul that ever stepped.  Swords!  Where he gets his notions I can’t think (though I know where he gets his language, poor lamb!).  Look at that thing, Sir!  For all the world like the dressed-up folk have on the stage or in pictures.”

“You haven’t let him see any books, I suppose, Nurse?” asked the Major.

“No, Sir.  Never a book has the poor lamb seen, except those you’ve brought.  I’ve always been in terror of his seeing a picture of a you-know-what, ever since you told me what the effect might be.  Nor he hasn’t so much as heard the name of it, so far as I know.”

“Well, he’ll see one to-day.  I’ve brought it with me—­must see it sooner or later.  Might see a live one anywhere—­in spite of all your care....  But about this sword—­where could he have got the idea?  It’s unlike any sword he ever set eyes on.  Besides if he ever did see an Italian rapier—­and there’s scarcely such a thing in India—­he’d not get the chance to use it as a copy.  Fancy his having the desire and the power to, anyhow!”

“I give it up, Sir,” said Nurse Beaton.

“I give it upper,” added the Major, taking the object of their wonder from the child.

And there was cause for wonder indeed.

A hole had been punched through the centre of the lid of a tobacco tin and a number of others round the edge.  Through the centre hole the steel rod had been passed so that the tin made a “guard”.  To the other holes wires had been fastened by bending, and their ends gathered, twisted, and bound with string to the top of the handle (of bored corks) to form an ornamental basket-hilt.

But the most remarkable thing of all was that, before doing this, the juvenile designer had passed the rod through a piece of bored stick so that the latter formed a cross-piece (neatly bound) within the tin guard—­the distinctive feature of the ancient and modern Italian rapiers!

Round this cross-piece the first two fingers of the boy’s right hand were crooked as he held the sword—­and this is the one and only correct way of holding the Italian weapon, as the Major was well aware!

“I give it most utterly-uppermost,” he murmured.  “It’s positively uncanny.  No uninitiated adult of the utmost intelligence ever held an Italian-pattern foil correctly yet—­nor until he had been pretty carefully shown.  Who the devil put him up to the design in the first place, and the method of holding, in the second?  Explain yourself, you two-anna[6] marvel,” he demanded of the child.  “It’s jadu—­black magic.”