PE 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-h