“Aunt Caroline says Miss Johnson wouldn’t like it, and that we’re not to mention her age at all. She asked me how we knew what it was.” “And what did you tell her?” “I told her Palmer had worked it out by arithmetic, but she didn’t seem to understand.” “I wonder why Miss Johnson wouldn’t like thirty-four rockets?” pondered Ann. “_I_ would.” “It’s because it makes her seem so old.” “Grown-up people never want to be thought old,” said Jim. “If you ask them their age they always say eighteen, or twenty-one, or something silly, and then they laugh as if they had been funny, and all the others laugh.” “Thirty-four _isn’t_ old,” said Ann. “Grandpapa read out of the newspaper the other day about a lady who was a hundred-and-two.” “What a ripping lot of rockets they could have had for her!” said Jim, regretfully. “Oh, but they couldn’t very well, because she had just died.” “They needn’t have waited till her very last day to have them.” Ann considered this. “Maybe she died suddenly.” “I’m sure it wasn’t that:――it was just that they didn’t think of it.” “Miss Johnson says more opportunities are wasted by want of thought than by anything else,” said Ann, improvingly. “She doesn’t think of many things herself――at least not of things anybody else wants to do.” “She thinks of the things _she_ wants to do, I expect. She says the thing she likes best of all is to watch the sun setting over the sea.” Jim was puzzled. “Why; what happens when it sets?” “I don’t think anything happens. She says it’s just a sort of feeling you get inside you:――and that it’s sad.” “Something _must_ happen then――in her inside. I hate feelings like that, and I don’t see how anybody could like them.” He eyed his stomach dubiously. They both remained pensive for a minute or two, as if held by a memory of past indispositions; then they dismissed the subject from their thoughts. Palmer and Edward had remained silent during the discussion, but the latter now got up. “Come on,” he said, “and let’s build the bonfire.” * * * * * But neither rockets nor bonfire were to be witnessed by Palmer, for at half-past seven Doctor O’Neill’s car drove for the second time up to the door, with a note for Aunt Caroline, requesting that Master Dorset should be allowed to pay the doctor a visit; and Aunt Caroline left it to Palmer himself either to accept or refuse the invitation. He turned to the others. “Why can’t you put it off?” grumbled Edward, voicing the general opinion. Even Aunt Caroline felt it rather strange that the doctor shouldn’t at least have asked Edward as well. She objected very strongly to such favouritism, more particularly, perhaps, because the favourite was not one of her own nephews. All she said, however, was, “You must remember Doctor O’Neill is very busy, and can’t choose his own time.” And Palmer added, “I think I’d better go.”