You've done it, and you'll have
to stand by it--and us too, worse luck. Never mind. YOU'LL have
your pocket-money before the Fifth. Anyway, we'll have the
Jack-in-the-box LAST, and get the most out of it we can.'
So the cracker and the Roman candles were lighted, and they were
all that could be expected for the money; but when it came to the
Jack-in-the-box it simply sat in the tray and laughed at them, as
Cyril said. They tried to light it with paper and they tried to
light it with matches; they tried to light it with Vesuvian fusees
from the pocket of father's second-best overcoat that was hanging
in the hall. And then Anthea slipped away to the cupboard under
the stairs where the brooms and dustpans were kept, and the rosiny
fire-lighters that smell so nice and like the woods where
pine-trees grow, and the old newspapers and the bees-wax and turpentine,
and the horrid an stiff dark rags that are used for cleaning brass and
furniture, and the paraffin for the lamps. She came back with a little
pot that had once cost sevenpence-halfpenny when it was full of
red-currant jelly; but the jelly had been all eaten long ago, and now
Anthea had filled the jar with paraffin. She came in, and she threw the
paraffin over the tray just at the moment when Cyril was trying with the
twenty-third match to light the Jack-in-the-box.
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