"Let's give a party," replied the little girl, and she jumped up to make out the list of friends she wished to invite.
The Flying Squadron
One morning about a week later Rover waked up very early. He slept at night in his kennel behind the barn, and he always kept one ear open so that he could hear the least little bit of noise. But it was not a little noise that waked him this time.
"Bang, bang! Crack, crack! Toot, toot! Ding, dong!" he heard from every direction.
"Oh dear!" thought Rover, "I wonder if this is the Fourth of July! It can't be a year since I heard that noise before." But he did not have to wonder long. A crowd of boys were coming down the street, blowing horns, drumming on tin pans and firing off torpedoes. They threw a fire-cracker into Rover's yard, and it exploded in front of his kennel.
"That's it," he said to himself, as the smoke drifted away in a little cloud; "it is the Fourth of July, after all."
The minute the cook opened the kitchen door he pattered up the back stairs to spend the day under Thelma's bed. His little mistress went two or three times to coax him to play with her; but he wouldn't even come out to eat his dinner, and when her friends began to arrive for the party she forgot all about him.
It was a beautiful evening, and after supper the children played games on the lawn. It seemed to them that it would never be dark enough for the fireworks.
"I wish the Fourth of July came in December," said one of the boys. "It is always dark by five o'clock when we want to go skating after school."