"Yes indeed you may," replied Ruth. "I shall be delighted to come and be with you and help you and talk with you, I'm sure I shall. We think alike about so many things--about monstrous celebrations and dangerous fireworks and the burning up of money, when so much is needed to make the poor comfortable, and improve the world. As though there were not sad accidents enough in the world without going to work and making accidents. Only think of the poor people of Martinique! Only just recovered from the catastrophe of Mont Pelee when a hurricane comes and sweeps away their homes again! I wonder the horrible Fire-kings don't go over there and try to amuse the people with a Mont Pelee eruption! This making sport out of such terrible happenings seems to be the rage just now." "King Pang _has_ invented a Mont Pelee firecracker," said Adelaide; "and a huge noise-maker it is--fifteen feet long and explodes fifty times! Do you know we visited him when we were in London and I didn't like him at all, though he is awful rich and entertained us splendidly. He invents fiery shows and goes all over the world to pile up money out of them, although he is worth millions already." "Please tell me about him," exclaimed Ruth eagerly. "I wonder if he is the one that I heard so much boasting about in Canada. The one that wooled the Americans into buying their '_Independence Day annihilators_' of him they said. Those horrible cannon crackers, and things of that sort which kill and maim so many every year--dangerous things that never ought to be manufactured or sold in any country under the heavens. He seems like an arch-fiend to me." "He is as proud as Lucifer anyway," replied Adelaide. "The whole family are as proud as they can be. They have _a coat of arms_ and everything as magnificent as the royal family." "A Coat of Arms! What has he done to deserve a Coat of Arms?" asked Ruth. "O! horrible things!--or his grandfathers have. One of them invented a war explosive for the British navy and another gave them a lot of powder to carry on the awful Crimean war! The Government made a Knight of him to pay him for his powder; and they are dreadfully proud of it. They've got it all written down on their Coat," laughed Adelaide. "They had better write down the number of human beings their fiendish inventions and gifts have killed," said Ruth indignantly. "O how glad I am to hear you say that. I told Mr. Bombs so in those very words," exclaimed Adelaide with her eyes brim full of honest glow. "And mamma said I was too young to have an opinion about such matters," she added in a grieved tone. "I am only nineteen," remarked Ruth, "but I have had an experience, and that amounts to more than years, sometimes."