“There never was such a boy,” as Mary said. He was “always in hot water.”
The queen’s birthday coming round soon after the vicar’s, Jupp, remembering how it used to be kept up when he was in the navy, great guns banging away at royal salutes while the small-arm men on board fired a feu de joie, or “fire of joy,” as he translated it by the aid of Miss Conny, who happened just then to be studying French, he determined to celebrate the anniversary as a loyal subject in similar fashion at the vicarage, with the aid of a couple of toy cannon and a small bag of powder which he purchased for the purpose.
Teddy, of course, was taken into his confidence, the artillery experiments being planned for his especial delectation; so, coming up to the house just about noon on the day of the royal anniversary, when he was able to get away from the station for an hour, leaving his mate Grigson in charge, he set about loading the ordnance and getting ready for the salute, with a train laid over the touch-holes of the cannon to set light to the moment it was twelve o’clock, according to the established etiquette in the navy, a box of matches being placed handy for the purpose.
As ill luck would have it, though, some few minutes before the proper time, Mary, who was trying to sling a clothes-line in the back garden, called Jupp to her assistance, and he being her attentive squire on all occasions, and an assiduous cavalier of dames, hastened to help her, leaving Teddy in charge of the loaded cannon, the gunpowder train, and lastly, though by no means least, the box of matches.
The result can readily be foreseen.
Hardly had Jupp reached Mary’s side and proceeded to hoist the obstreperous clothes-line, when “Bang! bang!” came the reports of distant cannonading on the front lawn, followed by an appalling yell from the little girls, who from the safe point of vantage of the drawing-room windows were looking on at the preparations of war.
To rush back through the side gate round to the front was but the work of an instant with Jupp, and, followed by Mary, he was almost as quickly on the spot as the sound of the explosion had been heard.
He thought that Master Teddy had only prematurely discharged the cannon, and that was all; but when he reached the lawn what was his consternation to observe a thick black cloud of smoke hanging in the air, much greater than could possibly have been produced by the little toy cannon being fired off, while Teddy, the cause of all the mischief, was nowhere to be seen at all!