r, blackguard? Get up!"

There was another sharp poke, a painful poke, against which, as he moved
to the other end of the seat, Dexter uttered a mild protest.

"Did you hear me say, `Get up'?" shouted Edgar.

Dexter obeyed, and moved a little nearer to the water's edge.

"I wish it was time to go," he said to himself. "I am so miserable
here."

"Now, go along there," said Edgar sharply. "Go on!"

The boy seemed to have a donkey in his mind's eye just then, for he
thrust and struck at Dexter savagely, and then hastily threw down the
stick, as an angry glow was gathering in his visitor's countenance. For
just then there was a step heard upon the gravel.

"Ah, Eddy, my darling," said a voice; and Lady Danby walked languidly
by, holding up a parasol. "At play, my dear?"

She did not glance at Dexter, who felt very solitary and sad as the lady
passed on, Master Eddy throwing himself on the grass, and picking it off
in patches to toss toward the water till his mother was out of sight,
when he sprang up once more, and picked the stick from where he had
thrown it upon a bed.

As he did this he glanced sidewise, and then stood watching for a few
minutes, when he made a playful kind of charge at his visitor, and drove
the point of the stick so vigorously against his back that the cloth
gave way, making a triangular hole, and causing the owner no little
pain.

"Don't," cried Dexter appealingly; "you hurt ever so. Let's play at
some game."

"I'm going to," cried Edgar, with a vicious laugh. "I'm going to play
at French and English, and you're the beggarly Frenchman at Waterloo.
That's the way to charge bayonets. How do you like that, and that, and
that!"

"Not at all," said Dexter, trying hard to be good-humoured.

"Then you'll have to like it, and ever so much more, too. Get up,
blackguard. Do you hear?"

Dexter rose and retreated; but, with no little agility, Edgar got before
him, and drove him toward the water, stabbing and lunging at him so
savagely, that if he had not parried some of the thrusts with his hands
his face must have been torn.

Edgar grew more and more excited over his work, and Dexter received a
nasty dig on one hand, another in the cheek, while another grazed his
ear.

This last was beyond bearing. The hurt was not so bad as several which
he had before received; but, perhaps from its nearness to his brain, it
seemed to rouse Dexter more than any former blow, and, with an angry
cr