"Here is your sword!" "Keep it," he said, folding his arms and trying to look unconcerned, "you have captured it fairly.

I am at your mercy; be kind to me." Madame Roussillon and Jean, the hunchback, hearing the racket of the foils had come out to see and were standing agape.
"You ought to be ashamed, Alice," said the dame in scolding approval of what she had done; "girls do not fence with gentlemen." "This girl does," said Alice.
"And with extreme disaster to this gentleman," said Beverley, laughing in a tone of discomfiture and resignation.
"Ah, Mo'sieu', there's nothing but disaster where she goes," complained Madame Roussillon, "she is a destroyer of everything.

Only yesterday she dropped my pink bowl and broke it, the only one I had." "And just to think," said Beverley, "what would have been the condition of my heart had we been using rapiers instead of leather-buttoned foils! She would have spitted it through the very center." "Like enough," replied the dame indifferently.

"She wouldn't wince, either,--not she." Alice ran into the house with the foils and Beverley followed.
"We must try it over again some day soon," he said; "I find that you can show me a few points.

Where did you learn to fence so admirably?
Is Monsieur Roussillon your master ?" "Indeed he isn't," she quickly replied, "he is but a bungling swordsman.