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to get a perfectly lovely Catharine wheel for eightpence.'
'I daresay, said Cyril, coldly;  but it's not YOUR eightpence anyhow-'
'But look here, said Robert,  really now, about the fireworks. We don't want to be disgraced before
those kids next door. They think because they wear red plush on Sundays no one else is any good.'
'I wouldn't wear plush if it was ever so-unless it was black to be beheaded in, if I was Mary Queen of
Scots, said Anthea, with scorn.
Robert stuck steadily to his point. One great point about Robert is the steadiness with which he can stick.
'I think we ought to test them, he said.
'You young duffer, said Cyril,  fireworks are like postage-stamps. You can only use them once.'
'What do you suppose it means by  Carter's tested seeds in the advertisement?'
There was a blank silence. Then Cyril touched his forehead with his finger and shook his head.
'A little wrong here, he said.  I was always afraid of that with poor Robert. All that cleverness, you
know, and being top in algebra so often-it's bound to tell-'
'Dry up, said Robert, fiercely.  Don't you see? You can't TEST seeds if you do them ALL. You just
take a few here and there, and if those grow you can feel pretty sure the others will be-what do you call
it?-Father told me-"up to sample". Don't you think we ought to sample the fire-works? Just shut our eyes
and each draw one out, and then try them.'
'But it's raining cats and dogs, said Jane.
'And Queen Anne is dead, rejoined Robert. No one was in a very good temper.  We needn't go out to
do them; we can just move back the table, and let them off on the old tea-tray we play toboggans with. I
don't know what YOU think, but  I think it's time we did something, and that would be really useful;
because then we shouldn't just HOPE the fireworks would make those Prossers sit up-we should
KNOW.'
'It WOULD be something to do, Cyril owned with languid approval.
So the table was moved back. And then the hole in the carpet, that had been near the window till the
carpet was turned round, showed most awfully. But Anthea stole out on tip-toe, and got the tray when
cook wasn't looking, and brought it in and put it over the hole.
Then all the fireworks were put on the table, and each of the four children shut its eyes very tight and put
out its hand and grasped something. Robert took a cracker, Cyril and Anthea had Roman candles; but
Jane's fat paw closed on the gem of the whole collection, the Jack-in-the-box that had cost two shillings,
and one at least of the party-I will not say which, because it was sorry afterwards-declared that Jane had
done it on purpose. Nobody was pleased. For the worst of it was that these four children, with a very
proper dislike of anything even faintly bordering on the sneakish, had a law, unalterable as those of the
Medes and Persians, that one had to stand by the results of a toss-up, or a drawing of lots, or any other
appeal to chance, however much one might happen to dislike the way things were turning out.
'I didn't mean to, said Jane, near tears.  I don't care, I'll draw another-'
'You know jolly well you can't, said Cyril, bitterly.  It's settled. It's Medium and Persian. You've done it,
and you'll have to stand by it-and us too, worse luck. Never mind. YOU'LL have your pocket-money
before the Fifth. Anyway, we'll have the Jack-in-the-box LAST, and get the most out of it we can.'
So the cracker and the Roman candles were lighted, and they were all that could be expected for the
money; but when it came to the Jack-in-the-box it simply sat in the tray and laughed at them, as Cyril
said. They tried to light it with paper and they tried to light it with matches; they tried to light it with
Vesuvian fusees from the pocket of father's second-best overcoat that was hanging in the hall. And then
Anthea slipped away to the cupboard under the stairs where the brooms and dustpans were kept, and
the rosiny fire-lighters that smell so nice and like the woods where pine-trees grow, and the old
newspapers and the bees-wax and turpentine, and the horrid an stiff dark rags that are used for cleaning
brass and furniture, and the paraffin for the lamps. She came back with a little pot that had once cost
sevenpence-halfpenny when it was full of red-currant jelly; but the jelly had been all eaten long ago, and
now Anthea had filled the jar with paraffin. She came in, and she threw the paraffin over the tray just at
the moment when Cyril was trying with the twenty-third match to light the Jack-in-the-box. The
Jack-in-the-box did not catch fire any more than usual, but the paraffin acted quite differently, and in an
instant a hot flash of flame leapt up and burnt off Cyril's eyelashes, and scorched the faces of all four
before they could spring back. They backed, in four instantaneous bounds, as far as they could, which
was to the wall, and the pillar of fire reached from floor to ceiling.
'My hat, said Cyril, with emotion,  You've done it this time, Anthea.'
The flame was spreading out under the ceiling like the rose of fire in Mr Rider Haggard's exciting story
about Allan Quatermain. Robert and Cyril saw that no time was to be lost. They turned up the edges of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]