All their relations had colds in their heads, so Jane and George were allowed to go out into the garden alone to let off their firework. Jane had put on her fur cape and her thick gloves, and her hood with the silver fox fur on it that was made out of Mother's old muff; and George had his overcoat with the three capes, and his comforter, and Father's sealskin traveling cap with the pieces that come down over your ears. It was dark in the garden, but the fireworks all about made it seem very gay, and though the children were cold they were quite sure that they were enjoying themselves. They got up on the fence at the end of the garden to see better; and then they saw, very far away, where the edge of the dark world is, a shining line of straight, beautiful lights arranged in a row, as if they were the spears carried by a fairy army. "Oh, how pretty," said Jane. "I wonder what they are. It looks as if the fairies were planting little shining baby poplar trees and watering them with liquid light." "Liquid fiddlestick!" said George. He had been to school, so he knew that these were only the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights. And he said so. "But what is the Rory Bory what's-its-name?" asked Jane. "Who lights it, and what's it there for?" George had to own that he had not learned that. "But I know," said he, "that it has something to do with the Great Bear, and the Dipper, and the Plough, and Charles's Wain." "And what are they?" asked Jane. "Oh, they're the surnames of some of the star families. There goes a jolly rocket," answered George, and Jane felt as if she almost understood about the star families. The fairy spears of light twinkled and gleamed: They were much prettier than the big, blaring, blazing bonfire that was smoking and flaming and spluttering in the next-door-but-one garden--prettier even than the colored fires at the Crystal Palace. "I wish we could see them nearer," Jane said. "I wonder if the star families are nice families--the kind that Mother would like us to go to tea with, if we were little stars?" "They aren't that sort of families at all, Silly," said her brother, kindly trying to explain. "I only said 'families' because a kid like you wouldn't have understood if I'd said constel ... and, besides, I've forgotten the end of the word. Anyway, the stars are all up in the sky, so you can't go to tea with them." "No," said Jane. "I said if we were little stars." "But we aren't," said George. "No," said Jane, with a sigh. "I know that. I'm not so stupid as you think, George. But the Tory Bories are somewhere at the edge. Couldn't we go and see them?" "Considering you're eight, you haven't much sense." George kicked his boots against the fencing to warm his toes. "It's half the world away." "It looks very near," said Jane, hunching up her shoulders to keep her neck warm.