“Just to give you an idea. He had a perfect passion, his sister says, for making a noise. Yes, but more than any boy she ever knew. You had only to say fire-crackers to make Louis explode with enthusiasm. The only reason he wanted to grow up was so that he could get a gun, and he’d rather let off torpedoes than eat pie. No picnic or birthday or holiday of any sort was the real thing unless he could make a fearful rumpus. And the day he lived for the year round was the Fourth of July. Yes, yes, I know most American boys are like that, only Louis was more so than any boy you ever heard of. So his sister says. Well, I forgot to tell you when he was two his father died awfully in debt. For years the Cheviots were so poor they didn’t always have enough bread. So they were naturally pretty short of fire-crackers. And for those early years poor little Louis had to get his fun out of other boys’ noise.” “Ah, the thing is to make it yourself.” Mrs. Locke spoke with the accent of one who makes the wider application. “Of course.” Hildegarde nipped the generalization in the bud. “Well, he learned very early that if he was to have even a little Fourth of July he had to save up for it. And he did. When he got a nickel or two he wouldn’t waste it on candy, and he didn’t even buy chewing-gum. Just saved up for July. The year he was seven his mother had to give up trying to live in part of their nice big house. They moved into a very small cottage on the other side of the garden. But Louis and his cousins, and the rest of the little boys of the neighborhood, were going to have the greatest and most glorious Fourth they’d any of them ever known. The others had toy pistols and rockets and little cannon. Louis had saved up and had got some fire-crackers and two little flags, and he was going to make things hum. Well, there was a man who had just moved into the Cheviots’ big house and nobody liked him, but I expect they wouldn’t have liked anybody who lived in that house without being a Cheviot. And he had a little boy about Louis’s age. And the little boy was very ill. Scarlet fever. Well, on the evening of the third (you know they never can wait till the Fourth), the boys all over town began to celebrate, but they were going to celebrate most just in front of Louis’s house, for that was where the great fight was to be—the battle, you know, where they were going to beat the British all over again. It was always more fun, and lots more noise and slaughter if Louis was one of the generals. So they came trooping down the street after supper, letting off torpedoes by the way. And when Louis heard them he tore out with his flags and his crackers, wild with excitement. And he lined the boys up and told them where the red-coats were in ambush behind the wood house. Louis had lit some punk, and the new neighbor came rushing out just as a big cracker went off with a bang. Barbara Cheviot was on her side of the laurel and