"There is my mast," said Charlie, securing the broom to the bottom of the
box which he had turned over. "Now I must have sails. It is going to be a
monitor, too, like what I read about in a book the other day."

After some effort, and more tribulation, there appeared a splendid piece
of naval architecture, a monitor with a turret, the deck bordered with a
twine-railing, two sails hanging down from Aunt Stanshy's small broom.

"That broom makes me think of what I learned at school when I was a girl."

"What was that?"

"I am not much of a scholar, but I remember this. Admiral Tromp was a
Dutchman, and commanded a fleet that went against the English. Tromp was
so successful that he tied a broom to his mast-head and went sailing over
the waters, and that meant he had swept his enemy from the sea, and if he
hadn't, he would certainly do it and make clean work of it. Over the blue
waters he went skipping along, feeling dreadful big, with that broom at
the mast-head. The English boys, though, came at him again and whipped
him, and poor Tromp was finally killed in a sea-fight. I don't know what
became of his broom. You had better call that an English and not a Dutch
broom."

When Charlie went up stairs that night, the _Neponset_ as he called the
monitor, was still sailing in the sitting-room, its sails all set, its
broom at the mast-head. He thought it was splendid to be sick.

"How long do you think this sickness may go on?" was the last question he
asked Aunt Stanshy that night.