“Years,” said Bevis, picking a mushroom from the embers, it burned his fingers and he had to wait till it was cooler. The mushrooms were better, their cups held some of the juice as they cooked, retaining the sweet flavour. They were so small, they were but a bite each. “I am thirsty,” said Mark. Bevis was the same, so they went down towards the water. Mark began to run down the slope, when Bevis suddenly remembered. “Stop,” he cried; “you can’t drink there.” “Why not?” “Why of course it’s the New Sea. We must go round to the Nile; it’s fresh water there.” So they ran through the firs to the Nile, and lapped from the brook. On the way home a little boy stepped out from the trees on the bank where it was high, and he could look down at them. “I say!”--he had been waiting for them--“say!” “Well!” growled Mark. “Bevis,” said the boy. Bevis looked up, he could not demean himself to answer such a mite. The boy looked round to see that he was sure of his retreat through the trees to the gap in the hedge he could crawl through, but they would find it difficult. Besides, they would have to run up the bank, which was thick with brambles. He got his courage together and shouted in his shrill little voice,-- “I say, Ted says he shan’t play if you don’t have war soon.” Mark picked up a dead branch and hurled it at the mite; the mite dodged it, and it broke against a tree, then he ran for his life, but they did not follow. Bevis said nothing till they reached the blue summer-house at home and sat down. Then he yawned. “War is a bother,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets, and leaning back in an attitude of weary despair at having to do something. If the rest would not have played, he would have egged them on with furious energy till they did. As they were eager he did not care. “O! well!” said Mark, nodding his head up and down as he spoke, as much as to indicate that he did not care personally; but still, “O! well! all I know is, if you don’t go to war Ted will have one all to himself, and have a battle with somebody else. I believe he sent Charlie.” Charlie was the mite. “Did he say he would have a war all to himself?” said Bevis, sitting upright. “I don’t know,” said Mark, nodding his head. “They say lots of things.” “What do they say?” “O! heaps; perhaps you don’t know how to make war, and perhaps--” “I’ll have the biggest war,” said Bevis, getting up, “that was ever known, and Ted’s quite stupid. Mind, he doesn’t have any more cherries, that’s certain. I hate him--awfully! Let’s make the swords.” “All right,” said Mark, jumping up, delighted that the war was going to begin. He was as eager as the others, only he did not dare say so. Most of the afternoon they were cutting sticks for swords, and measuring them so as to have all the same length.