Joshua Fuller was now twenty-six, an eternal offence to the eyes of his mother, who perceived in him nothing but a dreadful reminder of her husband at the same age. That anybody could dare to deplore Caterina’s life when in Joshua the evidence of her own was before them enraged Letizia with human crassness. But Joshua was going to be an asset to Fuller’s Fireworks. Just as his father had perceived the importance of chlorate of potash in 1829, so now in 1863 did Joshua perceive the importance of magnesium, and the house of Fuller was in front of nearly all its rivals in utilising that mineral, with the result that its brilliant fireworks sold better than ever. The Guilloché and Salamandre, the Girandole and Spirali of Madame Oriano, so greatly admired by old moons and bygone multitudes, would have seemed very dull affairs now. Another gain that Joshua provided for the business was to urge upon his father to provide for the further legislation about explosives that sooner or later was inevitable. With an ill grace Caleb Fuller had complied with the provisions of the Gunpowder Act of 1860; but, when the great explosion at Erith occurred a few years later, Joshua insisted that more must be done to prepare for the inspection of firework establishments that was bound to follow such a terrific disaster. Joshua was right, and when the Explosives Act of 1875 was passed the factory at Brigham had anticipated nearly all its requirements. By this time Joshua was a widower. In 1865, at the age of twenty-eight, he had married a pleasant young woman called Susan Yardley. After presenting him with one boy who was christened Abraham, she died two years later in producing another who was christened Caleb after his grandfather. The elder of these two boys reverted both in appearance and in disposition to the Oriano stock, and old Mrs. Fuller—she is sixty-three now and may no longer be called Letizia—took a bitter delight in never allowing old Mr. Fuller to forget it. She found in the boy, now a flash of Caterina’s eyes, now a flutter of Madame Oriano’s eyelids. She would note how much his laugh was like her own long ago, and she would encourage him at every opportunity to thwart the solicitude and defy the injunctions of Aunt Achsah and Aunt Thyrza. When her son protested against the way she applauded Abraham’s naughtiness, she only laughed. “Bram’s all right.” “I wish, mamma, you wouldn’t call him Bram,” Joshua protested. “It’s so irreverent. I know that you despise the Bible, but the rest of us almost worship it. I cannot abide this irreligious clipping of Scriptural names. And it worries poor papa terribly.” “It won’t worry your father half as much to hear Bram called Bram as it’ll worry poor little Bram later on to be called Abraham. That boy’s all right, Josh. He’s the best firework you’ve turned out of this factory for many a day. So, don’t let Achsah and Thyrza spoil him.” “They try their best to be strict, mamma.”