"We'll go out one night, and let some off outside her window."
"Oh, we couldn't!"
"I could," said Edmund, "and I will. I don't believe Nurse will ever settle the time to have them, so I shall do it without asking."
Freda and Daffy felt very uncomfortable when they were undressing and saying their prayers that night. When Nurse had left them in bed, Freda said:
"I left out 'make me a good girl' in my prayers to-night, because I mean to be wicked—just for once. It's always Nurse makes us wicked, because she tries to keep us from having fun."
"Fibo would say that was a mean excuse," said Daffy, wriggling in her bed.
They both were conscious that they were behaving badly when they crept out of their beds in dressing-gowns and slippers, and went along the passage towards Edmund's room. Nurse and Jane were downstairs. The long passage was only dimly lighted at one end. Edmund was ready. He came out of his room with mischief written all over his face.
"Isn't this ripping?" he said, producing a box of matches in one hand and the cracker in the other.
"What does it do?" asked Freda a little nervously. "Is it like the rockets at the Crystal Palace?"
"No; it leaps and bounds along the ground. I run with it a little way. Now then!" He applied his match, raced along the passage, and then flung it from him. There was an explosion, and then another, and another, as the cracker bounded up and down in the passage, then it leapt over the staircase and fell with a hiss and a bang in the hall. The noise and flames almost frightened the little girls, and then a door burst open below, and the frightened servants, headed by Nurse, came upon the scene. Freda and Daffy fled back to bed and buried their heads under the clothes. Edmund did the same, but Nurse knew he must be the culprit and went straight to his room. She was so angry that she boxed his ears soundly, then pounced upon the small square box of fireworks in his room and carried it off.