THE GOLDEN AGE
'I want a live dragon,' he announced: 'You've got to be my dragon!'
'Leave me go, will you?' squealed Harold, struggling stoutly. 'I'm playin' at something else. How can I be a dragon and belong to all the clubs?'
'But wouldn't you like to be a nice scaly dragon, all green,' said Edward, trying persuasion, 'with a curly tail and red eyes, and breathing real smoke and fire?'
Harold wavered an instant: Pall-Mall was still strong in him. The next he was grovelling on the floor. No saurian ever swung a tail so scaly and so curly as his. Clubland was a thousand years away. With horrific pants he emitted smokiest smoke and fiercest fire.
'Now I want a Princess,' cried Edward, clutching Charlotte ecstatically; 'and you can be the Doctor, and heal me from the dragon's deadly wound.'
Of all professions I held the sacred art of healing in worst horror and contempt. Cataclysmal memories of purge and draught crowded thick on me, and with Charlotte—who courted
128
