“Oh, that’s a sword, is it?  And ‘Fire’ has got an over-reach.  And it’s a qualified nuisance, is it?”

“Yeth, and the mare is coughing and her thythe is a blathted fool for letting her catch cold.”

“The mare has a cold and the syce[4] is a qualified fool, is he?  H’m!  I think it’s high time you had a look in at little old England, my son, what?  And who made you this elegant rapier?  Ochterlonie Sahib or—­who?” (Lieutenant Lord Ochterlonie was the Adjutant of the Queen’s Greys, a friend of Colonel de Warrenne, an ex-admirer of his late wife, and a great pal of his son.)

“’Tithn’t a waper.  It’th my thword.  I made it mythelf.”

“Who helped?”

“Nobody.  At leatht, Khodadad Khan, Orderly, knocked the holes in the tin like I showed him—­or elthe got the Farrier Thargeant to do it, and thaid he had.”

“Yes—­but who told you how to make it like this?  Where did you see a hand-part like this?  It isn’t like Daddy’s sword, nor Khodadad Khan’s tulwar.  Where did you copy it?”

“I didn’t copy it....  I shot ten rats wiv a bow-and-arrow last night.  At leatht—­I don’t think I shot ten.  Nor one.  I don’t think I didn’t, pwaps.”

“But hang it all, the thing’s an Italian rapier, by Gad.  Some one must have shown you how to make the thing, or you’ve got a picture.  It’s a pukka[5] mediaeval rapier.”

“No it’th not.  It’th my thword.  I made it....  Have a jolly fight”—­and the boy struck an extraordinarily correct fencing attitude—­left hand raised in balance, sword poised, legs and feet well placed, the whole pose easy, natural, graceful.

Curiously enough, the sword was held horizontal instead of pointing upward, a fact which at once struck the observant and practised eye of Major John Decies, sometime champion fencer.

“Who’s been teaching you fencing?” he asked.

“What ith ‘fenthing’?  Let’th have a fight,” replied the boy.

“Stick me here, Dam,” invited the Major, seating himself and indicating the position of the heart.  “Bet you can’t.”

The boy lunged, straight, true, gracefully, straightening all his limbs except his right leg, rigidly, strongly, and the “sword” bent upward from the spot on which the man’s finger had just rested.

“Gad!  Who has taught you to lunge?  I shall have a bruise there, and perhaps—­live.  Who’s behind all this, young fella?  Who taught you to stand so, and to lunge?  Ochterlonie Sahib or Daddy?”

“Nobody.  What is ‘lunge’?  Will you buy me a little baby-camel to play with and teach tricks?  Perhaps it would sit up and beg.  Do camelth lay eggth?  Chucko does.  Millions and lakhs.  You get a thword, too, and we’ll fight every day.  Yeth.  All day long——­”