oys, little girls and big girls, with, as
the theatre posters say, villagers and retainers, some forty of them in
all, and waited.

But the fireworks did not go off. Why they did not go off I cannot
explain; nobody ever COULD explain. The laws of nature seemed to be
suspended for that night only. The rockets fell down and died where they
stood. No human agency seemed able to ignite the squibs. The crackers
gave one bang and collapsed. The Roman candles might have been English
rushlights. The Catherine wheels became mere revolving glow-worms. The
fiery serpents could not collect among them the spirit of a tortoise.
The set piece, a ship at sea, showed one mast and the captain, and
then went out. One or two items did their duty, but this only served
to render the foolishness of the whole more striking. The little girls
giggled, the little boys chaffed, the aunts and cousins said it was
beautiful, the uncles inquired if it was all over, and talked about
supper and trains, the "villagers and retainers" dispersed laughing, the
indulgent mother said "never mind," and explained how well everything
had gone off yesterday; the clever little boy crept upstairs to his
room, and blubbered his heart out in the dark.

Hours later, when the crowd had forgotten him, he stole out again into
the garden. He sat down amid the ruins of his hope, and wondered what
could have caused the fiasco. Still puzzled, he drew from his pocket
a box of matches, and, lighting one, he held it to the seared end of a
rocket he had tried in vain to light four hours ago. It smouldered for
an instant, then shot with a swish into the air and broke into a hundred
points of fire. He tried another and another with the same result. He
made a fresh attempt to fire the set piece. Point by point the whole
picture--minus the captain and one mast--came out of the night, and
stood revealed in all the majesty of flame. Its sparks fell upon the
piled-up heap of candles, wheels, and rockets that a little while before
had obstinately refused to burn, and that, one after another, had been
thrown aside as useless. Now with the night frost upon them, they leaped
to light in one grand volcanic eruption. And in front of the gorgeous
spectacle he stood with only one consolation--his mother's hand in his.

The whole thing was a mystery to him at the time, but, as he learned to
know life better, he came to understand that it was only one example of
a solid but inexplicable fact, r