"Can't," said the boy. "Father won't let me."
Tim looked at him pityingly.
"Won't let you come out the night before the Fourth!" he exclaimed. "Gee! I'd like to see anybody stop me. What's he 'fraid of?"
"He isn't afraid," replied the boy. "He's mad because they make so much noise he can't sleep. He says they haven't any right to fire off guns and things on the Fourth."
"Hm!" sniffed Tim. "Henry Burns says you have, and I guess he knows. He's read all about it. He says there was a man named Adams who was a president once, and he said everybody ought to make all the noise they could; get out and fire guns, and blow horns, and beat on pans and yell like everything, and build bonfires and fire off firecrackers."
"Did he?" said the boy. "And did he say anything about getting out the night before?"
"Well, I dunno about that," answered Tim Reardon; "but of course the patrioticker you are, why, the sooner you begin. It's the Fourth of July the minute the clock strikes twelve—and, cracky, won't we make a racket then? Henry Burns, he's got a cannon; and so's Jack Harvey and Tom Harris and Bob White, and the Warren fellers they've got three, and a lot of other fellers have got 'em. Just you wait till the clock strikes, and there'll be some fun."
"I wish I could come out," said the boy, earnestly.
"Too bad you can't. You miss all the fun," said Little Tim. "I'll bet George Washington was out the first of any of 'em on the Fourth of July, when he was a boy."
Tim's knowledge of history was not quite so ample as his patriotic ardour.