Dick learned to know her as Maisie, and at first mistrusted her profoundly, for he feared that she might interfere with the small liberty of action left to him. She did not, however; and she volunteered no friendliness until Dick had taken the first steps. Long before the holidays were over, the stress of punishment shared in common drove the children together, if it were only to play into each other’s hands as they prepared lies for Mrs. Jennett’s use. When Dick returned to school, Maisie whispered, “Now I shall be all alone to take care of myself; but,” and she nodded her head bravely, “I can do it. You promised to send Amomma a grass collar. Send it soon.” A week later she asked for that collar by return of post, and was not pleased when she learned that it took time to make. When at last Dick forwarded the gift, she forgot to thank him for it. Many holidays had come and gone since that day, and Dick had grown into a lanky hobbledehoy more than ever conscious of his bad clothes. Not for a moment had Mrs. Jennett relaxed her tender care of him, but the average canings of a public school—Dick fell under punishment about three times a month—filled him with contempt for her powers. “She doesn’t hurt,” he explained to Maisie, who urged him to rebellion, “and she is kinder to you after she has whacked me.” Dick shambled through the days unkempt in body and savage in soul, as the smaller boys of the school learned to know, for when the spirit moved him he would hit them, cunningly and with science. The same spirit made him more than once try to tease Maisie, but the girl refused to be made unhappy. “We are both miserable as it is,” said she. “What is the use of trying to make things worse? Let’s find things to do, and forget things.” The pistol was the outcome of that search. It could only be used on the muddiest foreshore of the beach, far away from the bathing-machines and pierheads, below the grassy slopes of Fort Keeling. The tide ran out nearly two miles on that coast, and the many-coloured mud-banks, touched by the sun, sent up a lamentable smell of dead weed. It was late in the afternoon when Dick and Maisie arrived on their ground, Amomma trotting patiently behind them. “Mf!” said Maisie, sniffing the air. “I wonder what makes the sea so smelly? I don’t like it!” “You never like anything that isn’t made just for you,” said Dick bluntly. “Give me the cartridges, and I’ll try first shot. How far does one of these little revolvers carry?” “Oh, half a mile,” said Maisie, promptly. “At least it makes an awful noise. Be careful with the cartridges; I don’t like those jagged stick-up things on the rim. Dick, do be careful.” “All right. I know how to load. I’ll fire at the breakwater out there.” He fired, and Amomma ran away bleating. The bullet threw up a spurt of mud to the right of the wood-wreathed piles. “Throws high and to the right. You try, Maisie. Mind, it’s loaded all round.”