Fred and his elder brother John were at home for the holidays; they were
high-spirited lads of fourteen and fifteen years of age, and were
particularly fond of teasing both their elder sisters and little Edith;
a taste, by-the-bye, by no means peculiar to the Master Parkers, but one
which we cannot admire, nevertheless.

The two boys, with Emilie and Edith, were on their way to pay aunt Agnes
a little visit, having received from Mrs. Crosse, at the farm, a request
for the honour of the young lady's company as well as that of her
brothers. John and Frederick were to walk, and Emily and Edith were to
go in the little pony gig. As they were leaving the town, Edith caught
sight of John coming out of a shop which was a favourite resort of most
of the young people and visitors of the town of L----. It was
professedly a stationer's and bookseller's, and was kept by Mrs. Cox, a
widow woman, who sold balls, fishing tackle, books, boats, miniature
spades, barrows, garden tools, patent medicines, &c., and who had
lately increased her importance, in the eyes of the young gentlemen, by
the announcement that various pyrotechnical wonders were to be obtained
at her shop. There are few boys who have not at some time of their
boyhood had a mania for pyrotechnics--in plain English,
_fire-works_--and there are few parents, and parents' neighbours, who
can say that they relish the smell of gunpowder on their premises.

Mr. Parker had a particular aversion to amusements of the kind. He was
an enemy to fishing, to cricketing, to boating; he was a very quiet,
gentlemanly, dignified sort of man, and, although a kind father, had
perhaps set up rather too high a standard of quietness and order and
sedateness for his children. It is a curious fact, but one which it
would be rather difficult to disprove, that children not unfrequently
are the very opposites of their parents, in qualities such as I have