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“Dick, I’m glad you are with me—I’d like you to be Sir Dick, it would sound so pretty, so pretty.”

“Wake up, Piers,” said his cousin. The moment he spoke the child opened his eyes.

“It is time for your medicine, little chap.”

“Oh, I hate that nasty stuff,” said the boy, shuddering and turning his head away.

“But you’ll drink it for me because you are a brave little lad.”

“I don’t want it, I’d rather die.”

“Nonsense, Piers, folly!”

“But if I died you’d be Sir Dick.”

“And I should hate it,” said Dick.

“You’d hate it?” said the boy. “Why, you’d be the king then.”

“I’d hate it all the same. I want you to live. I love you, little chap. Now open your mouth, drink this off. Ah, that’s a good boy.”

The child swallowed the medicine.

“It doesn’t taste like the last,” he said; “it’s sticky and rather sweet. I’d rather have the old medicine.”

“Sweet and sticky,” said Nurse Ives, who came into the room just then. “It ought not to be, for there’s nothing either sweet or sticky in it. What do you mean, child? Give me the glass, please, Mr. Pelham.”