"See here, boys, mamma is going to ask papa not to buy you any more fireworks. Mamma is going to hunt the city over next year and find you some things that you will like better--bugles! tambourines! trumpets! bicycles!" CHAPTER VI. THE FUNNY FOURTH RACKET ON ENGLISH SOIL. Ruth hoped that her talk, painful though it had been to herself, would have a good influence with the Bearingtons. She would have been quickly undeceived, had she heard a conversation that occurred later on when Mr. Bearington came in from his "smoke walk," as his wife called it. "Papa," said Mrs. Bearington, "I wish you hadn't bought the fireworks! Miss Cornwallis has just been telling me the particulars of her little brother's terrible death. I begin to be awfully worried for fear the boys will hurt themselves." "O nonsense, Tishy! You needn't worry. I will attend to that racket. The Cornwallis' are cranks on the subject, you may set that down. I have heard Cornwallis talk. He thinks because his little boy got killed other boys should be denied the privilege," laughed Bearington. "Privilege, papa!" gasped Mrs. Bearington, looking at him in a way as helpless and childish as her style of addressing him warranted. "O, you never _can_ take a good round joke, Tishy; but you can stop worrying and you must. You must remember that I paid for this vacation and I am bound you shall not take it out in worriment." "Perhaps you could dispose of the fireworks papa--then I could _not_ worry about them." "No, he won't!" shouted Robbie bristling up. "He bought them for us and we are going to have them." "Down there! Young America!" said Bearington. "And you Tishy! You forget that we are on English soil. There isn't any demand here for Independence Day jubilators." "Nor for Fourth of July celebrations either, papa. There's Colonel Jordan. I know he wouldn't call for one." "He can't help himself though. That's where the fun will come in. I reckon we will teach this English boarding house that if they have us and our money, they will have to take us, Fourth of July racket and all." "But the Cornwallis', papa. I know how I should feel if we should lose one of our boys in that fearful way." "That boy didn't know how to handle fireworks, you bet," put in Robbie. "He may have been a natural born idiot for anything we know," remarked Bearington. "He was too good and beautiful to live anyway, according to their account." "Papa, how _bu'ful_ do I have to be to be too _bu'ful_ to live?" asked little Teddy coming up and laying his curly head lovingly on his father's knee. "Like a lamb for the slaughter," thought his mother. She broke out afresh: "Powder and dynamite are always more or less dangerous, papa." "Never you mind, Tishy. They are safe enough if rightly handled; and right enough, too, when they are put to the right uses." "What's the use of powder and die-a-mite except to celebrate the Fourth with, papa?" asked Joey.