eassure it and
at the same time to detain it.

He could not see her face. The rocket was of the kind known as
"fog detonator," and scattered no light with its explosion. He greatly
desired to know whether her gaze was turned towards him or up at the
dark sky, and this he could not tell. But the hand lay under cover of
his arm, and, as moments went by was not withdrawn. . . .

Half a minute passed thus, and then (oh, drat the fireworks after all!)
a salvo of rockets climbed the sky--luminous ones, this time. As they
shot up with a _wroo--oo--sh!_ the hand was snatched away, gently,
swiftly. . . .

They burst in balls of fire--blue, green, yellow, crimson. They lit up
the garden so vividly that each separate leaf on the laurustinus bushes
cast its own sharp shadow. "O--oh!" breathed Mrs Bosenna, but now on a
very different note, and as though her whole spirit drank deep,
quenching a celestial desire. Cai, stealing a look, saw her profile
irradiated, her gaze uplifted to the zenith.

The fiery shower died out, was extinct. Across the party hedge the boy
Palmerston was heard inquiring if that was the way the angels behaved in
heaven.

"Moderately so," responded the polite, high-pitched voice of Mrs
Bowldler (who never could resist fireworks). "Moderately so, but
without the accompanyin' igsplosion. That is, so far as we are
permitted to guess. . . . And highly creditable to _them_," it wound up,
with sudden asperity, "considering the things they sometimes have to
look down on!"

"I'd _love_," aspired the romantic boy, "to go up--an' up--an' up, just
like that, an' then bust--bust in red and yellow blazes."

"You will, one o' these days; that is, if you behave yourself. We have
that assurance within us."

"I wouldn' mind the dyin' out," ingeminated Palmerston, "so's I could
have one jolly good bust."

"In the land of marrow an' fatness we shall be doing of it permanent,"
Mrs Bowldler assured him for his comfort. "That's to say if we ever get
there. But you just wait till they let off the set pieces. There's one
of Queen Victoria, you can see the very eyelids. Sixty years Queen of
England, come next June: with _God Bless Her_ underneath in squibs like
Belshazzar's Feast. And He _will_, too, from what I know of 'im."

As it turned out, at the distance from which our company viewed them,
these set pieces laid some tax on the imagination. They were duly
applauded to be sure; and when Mrs Bosenna e