There were perhaps twenty families living in the Park, of whom we
became acquainted with two only; the people who lived next door to us
(whose name I have forgotten), and Mr. and Mrs. Squarey, who dwelt
higher up the street. The people next door had two boys of about my
own age, with whom I played cricket, and it was from the back windows
of their house that I saw for the first time an exhibition of
fireworks in their garden; I remember that when, just before the show
began, they put out the lamp in the room, I asked to have it
relighted, in order that I might see the as yet unexperienced wonder.
There are folks who go hunting for the sun with a lantern.

Mr. Squarey was tall and stiff of figure, with a singularly square
countenance, with a short whisker on each side of it; but spiritually
he was most affable and obliging; so was his wife; but as she was
short and globular, my father was wont to refer to her, in the privacy
of domestic intercourse, as Mrs. Roundey. They were profuse in
invitations to go with us to places--to Chester, to the Welsh
show-places, and so forth; and although I think my father and mother
would rather have gone alone, they felt constrained to accept these
suggestions. It was in their company, at all events, that I first saw
Chester "Rows"; and also, from some coign of vantage on those
delightful old walls, an English horse-race, with jockeys in silk caps
and jackets tinted like the rainbow. Mr. Squarey's demeanor towards my
sisters and myself was like that of the benevolent tutor in Sandford
and Merton, with which excellent work we were very conversant at that
time; as, likewise, with Edgeworth's Parents' Assistant, and with
still another engaging volume called, I think, the Budget of
something; at any rate, it had two or three little boys and girls in
it, who were anxious to acquire useful and curious information on many