On birthdays, “high days and holidays” he would ask “Grumper” to let him have the Sword for an hour or two, and would stand with it in his hand, rapt, enthralled, ecstatic.  How strange it made one feel!  How brave, and anxious to do fine deeds.  He would picture himself bearing an unconscious Lucille in his left arm through hostile crowds, while with the Sword he thrust and hewed, parried and guarded....  Who could fear anything with the Sword in his hand, the Sword of the Dream!  How glorious to die wielding it, wielding it in a good cause ... preferably on behalf of Lucille, his own beloved little pal, staunch, clever, and beautiful.  And he told Lucille tales of the Sword and of how he loved it!

CHAPTER V.

LUCILLE.

“If you drinks a drop more, Miss Lucy, you’ll just go like my pore young sister goed,” observed Cook in a warning voice, as Lucille paused to get her second wind for the second draught.

(Lucille had just been tortured at the stake by Sioux and Blackfeet—­thirsty work on a July afternoon.)

“And how did she go, Cookie-Bird—­Pop?” inquired Lucille politely, with round eyes, considering over the top of the big lemonade-flagon as it rose again to her determined little mouth.

“No, Miss Lucy,” replied Cook severely.  “Pop she did not.  She swole ... swole and swole.”

“You mean ‘swelled,’ Cookoo,” corrected Lucille, inclined to be a little didactic and corrective at the age of ten.

“Well, she were my sister after all, Miss Lucy,” retorted Cook, “and perhaps I may, or may not, know what she done. I say she swole—­and what is more she swole clean into a dropsy.  All along of drinking water.... Drops of water—­Dropsy.”

“Never drink water,” murmured Dam, absentmindedly annexing, and pocketing, an apple.

“Ah, water, but you see this is lemonade,” countered Lucille.  “Home-made, too, and not—­er—­gusty.  It doesn’t make you go——­” and here it is regrettable to have to relate that Lucille made a shockingly realistic sound, painfully indicative of the condition of one who has imbibed unwisely and too well of a gas-impregnated liquor.

“No more does water in my experiants,” returned Cook, “and I was not allooding to wulgarity, Miss Lucy, which you should know better than to do such.  My pore young sister’s systerm turned watery and they tapped her at the last.  All through drinking too much water, which lemonade ain’t so very different either, be it never so ’ome-made....  Tapped ‘er they did—­like a carksk, an’ ’er a Band of ’Oper, Blue Ribander, an’ Sunday Schooler from birth, an’ not departin’ from it when she grew up.  Such be the Ways of Providence,” and Cook sighed with protestive respectfulness....

“Tapped ’er systerm, they did,” she added pensively, and with a little justifiable pride.

“Were they hard taps?” inquired Lucille, reappearing from behind the flagon.  “I hate them myself, even on the funny-bone or knuckles—­but on the cistern! Ugh!”