“He’s _not_ a foreigner; he only just speaks French. He lived in Paris and learned it there,” she said quite easily. “That doesn’t make him a foreigner; besides, he learned good manners, Tommy. And as for his not mixing with you and Dickie and the rest, he’s older and doesn’t go to school--and anyway, you never go near him. I don’t care if he does smoke. _You_ smoke. Only you hide, and he doesn’t! I guess if he’s seventeen and has lived abroad where everybody smokes early he can smoke if he wants to. I guess if his father didn’t think it was all right he’d stop him. If he puts his arm around me and I need your help I’ll scream, Tommy, and when you come I’ll tell him you kissed me at your last birthday party! Will you fight him, Tommy? While he was in Paris he learned all about duelling, and you two can have a duel. I’ll steal one of the swords from our front parlour and you can practise with it.” Mr. Lupton was perfectly red with rage and white with mortification. He was two colours, and presented an alarming spectacle. Mermaid, done with taunting, suddenly approached him and laid her hand on his arm. “Don’t be mad, Tommy. I was only teasing. Of course he’s different from you and Dick, but he’s lived in strange places--in San Francisco and Paris--and he’s moved around a lot. And he has a sick mother and a queer father. You’d be funny in his place. And queer. And he’s seventeen, Tommy, and no bigger than you and I are! Don’t you think you could eat a cookie?” she asked, solicitously. “It’s only--only that I think such a lot of you, Mermaid,” he protested. His natural dignity reasserted itself. “I’ll walk home with you.” The procession formed, two abreast, and they went on toward Keturah Smiley’s. Mr. Lupton ate three cookies and an apple and examined, with an air of interest, the swords and cutlasses in the front parlour, which he had never handled before. “Does Vanton really know how to fight with a sword?” he ventured, curiously. “He had fencing lessons. Not a sword, a rapier,” Mermaid explained. “A sharp point that you stick into the other man. I think I’ll get him to give me lessons.” “What would a girl be doing with fencing lessons?” exclaimed Mr. Lupton, scornfully. “Oh, I don’t know. Just exercise. It might be useful sometime,” said Mermaid, vaguely. “You’re just thinking of something you two can do together.” Jealousy reawakened in Mr. Lupton’s bosom. “Well, he writes poetry, and we can’t write poetry together.” “No, but he can write it and read it to you,” the youth said, bitterly. “Wishy-washy stuff, poetry. All except ‘Marmion,’” he qualified. “Oh, Tommy, don’t be foolish,” sighed the young woman. An amusing thought struck Mr. Lupton. “Wait till I tell Dick he writes poetry,” he cried. “Ow! Won’t he yell? Won’t he? “Just like a foreigner to stab a man with a thing like this,” Tommy continued, imperilling the haircloth seat of one of the “deacon’s chairs” with an unskilful lunge. At this Mermaid lost all patience.