favourite resort of most
of the young people and visitors of the town of L----. It was
professedly a stationer's and bookseller's, and was kept by Mrs. Cox, a
widow woman, who sold balls, fishing tackle, books, boats, miniature
spades, barrows, garden tools, patent medicines, &c., and who had
lately increased her importance, in the eyes of the young gentlemen, by
the announcement that various pyrotechnical wonders were to be obtained
at her shop. There are few boys who have not at some time of their
boyhood had a mania for pyrotechnics--in plain English,
_fire-works_--and there are few parents, and parents' neighbours, who
can say that they relish the smell of gunpowder on their premises.

Mr. Parker had a particular aversion to amusements of the kind. He was
an enemy to fishing, to cricketing, to boating; he was a very quiet,
gentlemanly, dignified sort of man, and, although a kind father, had
perhaps set up rather too high a standard of quietness and order and
sedateness for his children. It is a curious fact, but one which it
would be rather difficult to disprove, that children not unfrequently
are the very opposites of their parents, in qualities such as I have
described. Possibly they may not have been inculcated quite in the right
manner; but that is not our business here.

Edith guessed what her brothers were after, and told her suspicious to
Emilie; but not until they were within sight of the farm-house. John
and Fred, who had been a short cut across the fields, were in high glee
awaiting their arrival, and assisted Edith and her friend to alight more
politely than usual. Aunt Agnes was in ecstasies of delight to see her
dear Emilie, and she caressed Edith most lovingly also. Edith liked the
old lady, who had a fund of fairy tales, such as the German language is
rich in. Often would Edith go and sit by the old lady as she knitted,
and listen to the story of the "Flying Trunk," or the "Two Swans," with
untiring interest; and old ladies of a garrulous turn like good
listeners. So aunt Agnes called Edith a charming girl, and Edith, who
had seldom seen aunt Agnes otherwise than conversable and pleasant,
thought her a very nice old lady.

Mrs. Crosse was extremely polite; and in the bustle of greeting, and
putting up the pony, and aunt Agnes' questions, the fire-work affair was
almost forgotten. When they all met at tea, the farmer, who had almost
as great a horror of gunpowder as Mr. Parker--and in the vicinity o