"I should like to see your laboratory, Johnny," said Julia. "I went into a very large laboratory with Ernest, once: it was full of bottles and all sorts of queer things for performing experiments."
"Johnny's would make you laugh, then," said Felix. "It's a little room; and all his bottles are vials, and they're in a small closet."
"But he's learned a lot up in that laboratory," said Sue. "And he can perform ever so many pretty experiments. You can make fire burn under water, can't you, Johnny?"
"Yes: I learned that out of the 'Play-Book.'"
"I don't see how you can make any thing burn under water," remarked Ruth; "for water puts out fire."
"Can't you tell, Felix?" asked Johnny.
"How can I tell?"
"You remember about the gunpowder burning shut up in the holes the men drilled?"
"Yes. That was because fire is produced by the oxygen of the air uniting with the carbon and hydrogen in other substances; and although the air is shut out in the drill-hole, there is oxygen in the nitre, which unites with the sulphur and charcoal."
"Bravo, Felix!" exclaimed Pierre: "you may be a scholar yet! I didn't think Johnny had got you as far as that."