‘Nobody is hurt but Ada,’ said Maurice, ’but her face is a good deal burnt.’

’Eh? then she won’t be fit for the 30th, poor child! tell me how it was, make haste.  I heard it from Mr. Burnet as I came down to dinner.  We have a dozen people at dinner.  I told him not to mention it to my mother, and rode off to hear the truth.  Make haste, half the people were come when I set off.’

The horse’s caperings so discomposed Maurice that he could scarcely collect his wits enough to answer:  ’Some signal rocket on a new principle—­detonating powder, composed of oxymuriate—­Oh!  Rotherwood, take care!’

‘Speak sense, and go on.’

’Then Phyllis came in, banged the door, and the vibration caused the explosion,’ said Maurice, scared into finishing promptly.

’Eh! banging the door?  You had better not tell that story at school.’

‘But, Rotherwood, the deton—­Oh! that horse—­you will be off!’

’Not half so dangerous as patent rockets.  Is Emily satisfied with such stuff?’

‘Don’t you know that fulminating silver—­’

‘What does Robert Devereux say?’

‘Really, Rotherwood, I could show you—­’

’Show me?  No; if rockets are so perilous I shall have nothing to do with them.  Stand still, Cedric!  Just tell me about Ada.  Is there much harm done?’

’Her face is scorched a good deal, but they say it will soon be right.’

’I am glad—­we will send to inquire to-morrow, but I cannot come—­ha, ha! a new infernal machine.  Good-bye, Friar Bacon.’

Away he went, and Maurice stood looking after him with complacent disdain.  ’There they go, Cedric and Rotherwood, equally well provided with brains!  What is the use of talking science to either?’

It was late when he reached the house, and his two sisters shortly came down to tea, with news that Adeline was asleep and Phyllis was going to bed.  The accident was again talked over.

‘Well,’ said Emily, ’I do not understand it, but I suppose papa will.’

’The telling papa is a bad part of the affair, with William and Eleanor there too,’ said Jane.

‘I do not mean to speak to Phyllis about it again,’ said Emily, ’it makes her cry so terribly.’

‘It will come out fast enough,’ sighed Maurice.  ‘Good-night.’

More than once in the course of the night did poor Phyllis wake and cry, and the next day was the most wretched she had ever spent; she was not allowed to stay in the nursery, and the schoolroom was uninhabitable, so she wandered listlessly about the garden, sometimes creeping down to the churchyard, where she looked up at the old tower, or pondered over the graves, and sometimes forgetting her troubles in converse with the dogs, in counting the rings in the inside of a foxglove flower, or in rescuing tadpoles stranded on the broad leaf of a water-lily.