Ward nodded. His round face was smudged with smoke and damp with perspiration.
"Firecracker!" he told them shortly. "Joe Anderson threw it."
"That mean, hateful boy!" sputtered Margy, but Fred was strangely calm.
"Are you sure?" he demanded.
"Of course I'm sure," and Ward nodded. "I was coming around the back way, to go into the barn, and all of a sudden Joe ran out from behind the old lilac bush. He had a firecracker in his hand and it was sputtering. I yelled at him, but he threw it straight at me and the next thing I knew things started to go off with a bang. Did you hear it?" he asked as an afterthought.
"Yes, we heard it," admitted Fred.
"Of all the mean boys!" Margy said again. "Now I hope the Conundrum Club is happy—we won't have a thing to celebrate with on the Fourth of July."
"Perhaps he didn't know Ward was carrying fireworks," protested Polly, the peacemaker.
"Maybe there is something that will go off yet," her brother Artie suggested, a hopeful hint that had the effect of setting them all to looking over the wreckage to see what might be salvaged.