"But little feet are of more consequence than grass, you know they are, only you don't stop to think. And little children are better than fireworks. I wish all the ugly old fireworks were at the bottom of the sea. You ought not to have let Mr. Bombs send off his piece over the gardener's house." He had not told her about the fireworks that were at the bottom of the river and he hated the idea of doing so. He turned away and she went to the engine house. Bombs was there. She was going to blame him for what had happened--that is all that he deserved to be. "Was your piece more dangerous than you thought, Mr. Bombs?" "Well, rather, Miss Adelaide--that is I didn't expect it was going to burst up--or down I should say." "But you knew it was dangerous enough to set things on fire if it _did_ burst and strike them, Mr. Bombs." "Yes, Miss, I knew enough for that." "Then you are to blame for sending it off where you _did_, Mr. Bombs, and father is to blame for letting you do it. I have just told him so." "There was no other place--that is handy--where the ladies could see it and be comfortably seated, Miss Adelaide." "Then there ought to have been a place made, Mr. Bombs, and if there couldn't have been, then you ought not to have sent it off at _all_. You know you had not, and I shall always blame you for it. It was very, very wrong." "I see!" laughed Bombs. "You are on your blaming expedition this morning, Miss Adelaide. You are right about having a place made, though. There ought to be for large works; and when I get my historical piece done there will be a place on purpose for it--a large place--a sort of a grand amphitheatre something like the old Roman but Americanized and more enjoyable. That's my ambition. I have got through even with tourbillions." CHAPTER XIV. SCHWARMER'S THREATENED ARREST. Mr. Schwarmer was a man who talked very bluntly, so he admitted, but he expected to give his hearers the impression that his bluntness was simply a species of noble frankness. The next day but one after Independence Day, he informed the few acquaintances whom he happened to meet at the depot, that he was obliged to return to the city at once for two reasons. The first was a rise in stocks and the second was to see his family off on the steamer, but that he would return on the fifteenth of the month and arrest and punish the chief leaders in the plot which had resulted in the destruction of his property.