alfpenny 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 the
carpet, and kicked them over the tray. This cut off the column of fire,
and it disappeared and there was nothing left but smoke and a dreadful
smell of lamps that have been turned too low.

All hands now rushed to the rescue, and the paraffin fire was only a
bundle of trampled carpet, when suddenly a sharp crack beneath their
feet made the amateur firemen start back. Another crack--the carpet
moved as if it had had a cat wrapped in it; the Jack-in-the-box had at
last allowed itself to be lighted, and it was going off with desperate
violence inside the carpet.

Robert, with the air of one doing the only possible thing, rushed to the
window and opened it. Anthea screamed, Jane burst into tears, and
Cyril turned the table wrong way up on top of the carpet heap. But the
firework went on, banging and bursting and spluttering even underneath
the table.

Next moment mother rushed in, attracted by the howls of Anthea, and in a
few moments the firework desisted and there was a dead silence, and
the children stood looking at each other's black faces, and, out of the
corners of their eyes, at mother's white one.

The fact that the nursery carpet was ruined occasioned but little
surprise, nor was any one really astonished that bed should prove the
immediate end of the adventure. It has been said that all roads lead to
Rome; this may be true, but at any rate, in early youth I am quite sure
that many roads lead to BED, and stop there--or YOU do.

The rest of the fireworks wer