'Pooh!' said Maisie, with a little laugh of gratified vanity. She stood
close to Dick as he loaded the revolver for the last time and fired over
the sea with a vague notion at the back of his head that he was
protecting Maisie from all the evils in the world. A puddle far across
the mud caught the last rays of the sun and turned into a wrathful red
disc. The light held Dick's attention for a moment, and as he raised his
revolver there fell upon him a renewed sense of the miraculous, in that
he was standing by Maisie who had promised to care for him for an
indefinite length of time till such date as---- A gust of the growing
wind drove the girl's long black hair across his face as she stood with
her hand on his shoulder calling Amomma 'a little beast,' and for a
moment he was in the dark,--a darkness that stung. The bullet went
singing out to the empty sea.

'Spoilt my aim,' said he, shaking his head. 'There aren't any more
cartridges; we shall have to run home.' But they did not run. They
walked very slowly, arm in arm. And it was a matter of indifference to
them whether the neglected Amomma with two pin-fire cartridges in his
inside blew up or trotted beside them; for they had come into a golden
heritage and were disposing of it with all the wisdom of all their
years.

'And I shall be----' quoth Dick, valiantly. Then he checked himself: 'I
don't know what I shall be. I don't seem to be able to pass any exams,
but I can make awful caricatures of the masters. Ho! Ho!'

'Be an artist, then,' said Maisie. 'You're always laughing at my trying
to draw; and it will do you good.'

'I'll never laugh at anything you do,' he answered. 'I'll be an artist,