"We shall be awfully late for tea," said Maisie. "Let's go home."
"Let's use the rest of the cartridges first," said Dick; and he helped Maisie
down the slope of the fort to the sea,--a descent that she was quite capable of
covering at full speed. Equally gravely Maisie took the grimy hand. Dick bent
forward clumsily; Maisie drew the hand away, and Dick blushed.
"It's very pretty," he said.
"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.
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