The Phoenix and the Carpet | Page 4

Anne is dead,' rejoined Robert. No one was in a very good
temper. 'We needn't go out to do them; we can just move back the table,
and let them off on the old tea-tray we play toboggans with. I don't
know what YOU think, but I think it's time we did something, and that
would be really useful; because then we shouldn't just HOPE the
fireworks would make those Prossers sit up--we should KNOW.'
'It WOULD be something to do,' Cyril owned with languid approval.
So the table was moved back. And then the hole in the carpet, that had
been near the window till the carpet was turned round, showed most
awfully. But Anthea stole out on tip-toe, and got the tray when cook
wasn't looking, and brought it in and put it over the hole.
Then all the fireworks were put on the table, and each of the four
children shut its eyes very tight and put out its hand and grasped
something. Robert took a cracker, Cyril and Anthea had Roman candles;
but Jane's fat paw closed on the gem of the whole collection, the
Jack-in-the-box that had cost two shillings, and one at least of the
party--I will not say which, because it was sorry afterwards--declared
that Jane had done it on purpose. Nobody was pleased. For the worst of
it was that these four children, with a very proper dislike of anything
even faintly bordering on the sneakish, had a law, unalterable as those
of the Medes and Persians, that one had to stand by the results of a
toss-up, or a drawing of lots, or any other appeal to chance, however
much one might happen to dislike the way things were turning out.
'I didn't mean to,' said Jane, near tears. 'I don't care, I'll draw another--'
'You know jolly well you can't,' said Cyril, bitterly. 'It's settled. It's
Medium and Persian. You've done it, and you'll have to stand by it--and
us too, worse luck. Never mind. YOU'LL have your pocket-money
before the Fifth. Anyway, we'll have the Jack-in-the-box LAST, and

get the most out of it we can.'
So the cracker and the Roman candles were lighted, and they were all
that could be expected for the money; but when it came to the
Jack-in-the-box it simply sat in the tray and laughed at them, as Cyril
said. They tried to light it with paper and they tried to light it with
matches; they tried to light it with Vesuvian fusees from the pocket of
father's second-best overcoat that was hanging in the hall. And then
Anthea slipped away to the cupboard under the stairs where the brooms
and dustpans were kept, and the rosiny fire-lighters that smell so nice
and like the woods where pine-trees grow, and the old newspapers and
the bees-wax and turpentine, and the horrid an stiff dark rags that are
used for cleaning brass and furniture, and the paraffin for the lamps.
She came back with a little pot that had once cost
sevenpence-halfpenny when it was full of red-currant jelly; but the jelly
had been all eaten long ago, and now Anthea had filled the jar with
paraffin. She came in, and she threw the paraffin over the tray just at
the moment when Cyril was trying with the twenty-third match to light
the Jack-in-the-box. The Jack-in-the-box did not catch fire any more
than usual, but the paraffin acted quite differently, and in an instant a
hot flash of flame leapt up and burnt off Cyril's eyelashes, and scorched
the faces of all four before they could spring back. They backed, in four
instantaneous bounds, as far as they could, which was to the wall, and
the pillar of fire reached from floor to ceiling.
'My hat,' said Cyril, with emotion, 'You've done it this time, Anthea.'
The flame was spreading out under the ceiling like the rose of fire in
Mr Rider Haggard's exciting story about Allan Quatermain. Robert and
Cyril saw that no time was to be lost. They turned up the edges of the
carpet, and kicked them over the tray. This cut off the column of fire,
and it disappeared and there was nothing left but smoke and a dreadful
smell of lamps that have been turned too low.
All hands now rushed to the rescue, and the paraffin fire was only a
bundle of trampled carpet, when suddenly a sharp crack beneath their
feet made the amateur firemen start back. Another crack--the carpet
moved as if it had had a cat wrapped in it; the Jack-in-the-box had at

last allowed itself to be lighted, and it was going off with desperate
violence inside the carpet.
Robert, with the air of one doing the only possible thing, rushed to the
window and opened