Peterkin had given
them permission to have the boys for the whole day, and they understood
the day as beginning when they went to bed the night before. This
accounted for the number of horns.

It would have been impossible to hear any explanation; but the five
minutes were over, and the horns had ceased, and there remained only
the noise of a singular leaping of feet, explained perhaps by a possible
pillow-fight, that kept the family below partially awake until the bells
and cannon made known the dawning of the glorious day,--the sunrise, or
"the rising of the sons," as Mr.

Peterkin jocosely called it when they heard the little boys and their
friends clattering down the stairs to begin the outside festivities.

They were bound first for the swamp, for Elizabeth Eliza, at the
suggestion of the lady from Philadelphia, had advised them to hang some
flags around the pillars of the piazza. Now the little boys knew of
a place in the swamp where they had been in the habit of digging for
"flag-root," and where they might find plenty of flag flowers. They did
bring away all they could, but they were a little out of bloom. The
boys were in the midst of nailing up all they had on the pillars of the
piazza when the procession of the Antiques and Horribles passed along.
As the procession saw the festive arrangements on the piazza, and the
crowd of boys, who cheered them loudly, it stopped to salute the house
with some especial strains of greeting.

Poor Mrs. Peterkin! They were directly under her windows! In a few
moments of quiet, during the boys' absence from the house on their
visit to the swamp, she had been trying to find out whether she had
a sick-headache, or whether it was all the noise, and she was just
deciding it was the sick headache, but was falling into a light slumber,
when the fresh noise outside began.

There were the imitations of the crowing of cocks, and braying of
donkeys, and the sound of horns, encored and increased by the cheers of
the boys. Then began the torpedoes, and the Antiques and Horribles had
Chinese crackers also.

And, in despair of sleep, the family came down to breakfast.

Mrs. Peterkin had always been much afraid of fire-works, and had never
allowed the boys to bring gunpowder into the house. She was even afraid
of torpedoes; they looked so much like sugar-plums she was sure some the
children would swallow them, and explode before anybody knew it.

She was very timid about other thing