SCHWARMER DOES A LITTLE HUSTLING ON ADELAIDE’S ACCOUNT—A FOURTH OF JULY BUGLE.

Three skilled Pyrotechnics came down from the city a week before the Fourth to set up Mr. Bombs’ Pyro-spectacle, The Siege of Yorktown. Mr. Bombs himself was very busy superintending the work, which was conducted with all possible secrecy. He did not absolutely refuse to answer Adelaide’s questions; but he called her Pythagoras in Petticoats quite frequently and she knew that whenever the epithet came in, it was to stand in the place of an explanation; but she soon found out enough about it to know she wasn’t going to like it and she told him so frankly. She could not do otherwise. The frankness that her father claimed to have she possessed in a full degree. Moreover, she had a desire for correct knowledge which he did not possess.

She re-read the Siege of Yorktown and the life of Washington during those days and she could talk intelligently about both.“It’s sad enough to think, Mr. Bombs, that Yorktown was besieged and so many lives lost and so much property destroyed, without having it done over and over and over again.”

“I’m afraid you don’t love your country and the Father of it as well as you should, Miss Adelaide.”

“Yes, I do, Mr. Bombs. I love my country and I love Washington and I wonder what he would say, were he to come back after all these years, and see us besieging an imaginary Yorktown, and burning up money which he and his men had almost perished for the want of. You haven’t represented the misery and poverty of it, Mr. Bombs.”

“No, Miss Adelaide, nor the money chests of Rochambeau and Laurens,” laughed Bombs.

“You represent only what you consider the glory of it, Mr. Bombs. Washington would never admit that there was any glory in war. He said it was ‘a plague that should be banished from the earth.’ What would he say if he should take a look at the earth as it is now and see the millions and millions spent to glorify war, be-star it and write it on God’s sky in lines of fire! And, worse still, see thousands of innocent youths sacrificed yearly, not to the patriotic sentiment, but to the patriotic fury. There was little Laurens Cornwallis’ terrible accident! Have you any idea how it could have happened, Mr. Bombs?”

“Yes, I have an idea, Miss Adelaide—at least an idea of how it might have occurred, but ideas are not worth much without proofs. They are apt to be rather prejudicial, especially with young ladies of your age. Perhaps I will tell you my idea sometime.”

“Before you go away, Mr. Bombs?”

“No, surely not. You will not be much older then,” laughed Bombs. “When I come back from Europe you will be quite a young lady. The explosion of an idea or of fireworks will not be apt to shock you then.”

“I shall always be shocked when I think of that beautiful boy’s death, Mr. Bombs. It’s a dreadful mystery!”

“Was his name Laurens or Lawrence.” asked Bombs, laconically.

“Laurens. It was his mother’s maiden name. Her ancestors were French.”

“Laurens Cornwallis! Indeed! Two celebrated names. English and French conjoined. Do they claim to be descendants of the French financier and of the English fighter?” asked Bombs.

“I have never heard so. Wouldn’t it be lovely though? Foe meeting foe in true love and friendliness through their children. Mr. and Mrs. Cornwallis are a very devoted couple.”

“My point of view was simply consolatory. Providence permitting, it might not be well to have too many Cornwallis’s on American soil,” said Bombs.

“We have room enough and to spare. I read a letter yesterday from Washington to Lafayette. He said it’s a strange thing that there should not be room enough in the world for men to live without cutting each other’s throats.”

“But he laid siege to Yorktown all the same, Miss Adelaide.”

“Yes, but after it was all over and he had grown older and wiser, he saw how horrible it was. I almost know he did.”

“I am only twenty-one and the siege is booked,” laughed Bombs. “I wonder if Mrs. Ruth Cornwallis will come to witness it? I should think she would be interested, especially if one of her grandfathers paid French money for it and the other had to surrender.”

“I think she will not, but I’m going to ask her today,” replied Adelaide, as she started off for the Library.

When she returned she told Bombs that Ruth was supposedly allied to the Laurens and Cornwallis of Revolutionary fame and that her husband, Ralph Oswald Norwood, could trace his ancestry back to the British merchant who told King George that “nothing would satisfy the Americans short of permission to fish to an unlimited extent on the banks of New Foundland.”

“Then I shall have to give them seats in the front row, I suppose,” laughed Bombs.

“No, they are not coming, Mr. Bombs. Ruth attended the Queen’s birthday celebration once when she was in Canada. It wound up with one of the great London Pyro-king’s shows. She did not like it at all and was afterwards shocked to learn that America had paid millions of dollars for such shows during the twenty-five years of his occupancy of her market and that they were advertisements for his Fourth of July Fireworks, which are a curse to the land.”

Mr. Bombs received the information with an air of unconcern and Adelaide went to her father’s office. She had a piece of information for him also, and something more.

“O father, Ruth can’t come to our dedication if you are going to have a military company with guns and swords and a Fourth of July racket band in the procession. Such things make her sick.”

“What nonsense, Adelaide! I guess she can stand it since the small boy is not permitted to have a hand in it.”

“No she can’t, father. It isn’t nonsense. How would you feel if I should be brought to you tomorrow all torn to pieces as her little brother was?”

“O, my dear child! don’t mention it!”

“But I must mention it and I want you to look straight into my eyes and answer me truly! Suppose I should be brought home to you this Fourth with my eyes both blown out and mamma’s jewels lodged in the sockets, do you think you could ever bear the sight or sound of horrid explosive things after that—bear them without a shudder—even if they were in the hands of grown-up people?”

“Such a thing never could happen, Addie.”

“It did happen to Ruth’s little brother. The jewels were his mother’s wedding sapphires.”

“O Addie! Addie!”

“Answer me truly, father.”

“No, dear child, I never could.”

“Ruth can’t either. She has more reason than you could have. She’s like poor Mary, the gardener’s wife. Her husband and parents know it wouldn’t be safe for her to come if there’s going to be guns or things of that sort. She wants to come so much that Ralph was going to speak to you and see if they couldn’t be left out; but I told him I was the one to speak, because the Library was going to be named for me.”

“Well, there is something in that, Adelaide, most assuredly there is; but it’s rather short notice. The military company were coming on the morning train.”

“Telegraph. You’d do it if stocks were in jeopardy—you know you would—you are such a hustler.”

“Of course, of course! Here it goes then. I can’t ruin my reputation as a hustler,” said Schwarmer, stepping to the ’phone and calling up the regiment. “Don’t come to the dedication of The Adelaide Library.”

“Now, there’s one hustle for you, what next?” laughed Schwarmer. Adelaide laughed too and clapped her hands.

“O! isn’t it jolly, father! The soldiers can stay at home for once and dear, sweet, little Mrs. Ruth can come.”

“What next, Addie? I’ve got on my hustling cap. Call off.”

“The Independence Day racket band and the rockets must be left out of the procession, father.”

“O! now! that strikes nearer home, Addie! But I can do it. I can hustle things near by, most assuredly I can, if I once set out with my hustling suit all on. Bombs will have to confine his fire to Yorktown if I say so, won’t he?”

“Yes, and you’ll say so, won’t you, father?”

“Yes, Addie, I’ll say so if you really want me to; but aren’t you afraid it will hurt Bombs’ feelings to have his precious rockets left out in the dark, so to speak. He has invented a new kind on purpose for daylight show—very rich and dark and velvety, exceedingly so, and he has named it the ‘Airy Navy Rocket.’ I suppose he intends it for a hit at Lord Tennyson’s ‘airy navies grappling in the central blue,’ and no doubt but they’d get hurt if they should ever materialize sufficiently to get hit with Bombs’ rockets,” laughed Schwarmer, looking at Adelaide, keenly. He was wondering how she stood affected toward the young man.

“Airy Navy Rocket!” exclaimed Adelaide. “I won’t have it. I don’t care if his feelings are hurt. You know how his horrid rocket hurt poor Mary. It killed her baby, hurt her feelings and made her sick. She and her children are going over to Ruth’s to stay the night of the Fourth. She is afraid to stay with us. O dear! dear! I think it’s dreadful to have our own people feel that way toward us. I can’t endure it. I thought the Common Council had passed a law against sending off dangerous rockets.”

“They have, but it didn’t include Bombs’ brand-fired new navy rocket; and even if it had a few little fines wouldn’t cramp him much,” laughed Schwarmer.

“But I include it. I say he has no business to put those hissing horrors into the Adelaide Library procession. I won’t have the Library named Adelaide if he does.”

“Good for Adelaide,” laughed Schwarmer. “That ends it. I promise. What next? There is something more. I see it in your eye.”

“Yes. There is one thing more. Promise not to have the cannon let off. Ruth doesn’t like to hear it and it makes her mother cry, because little Laurens shivered when he heard it the morning before he was killed, and asked her why you didn’t have a bugle?”

Schwarmer turned quickly to the ’phone and called up a music-dealer: “Please send me at once the best bugle and bugler that there is in the market.”“That’s all, dear blessed father. I’m so happy! What a truly glorious time we are going to have,” cried Adelaide, as she danced out of the office and hastened away to the Library to tell Ruth the good news. She did not tell her about the bugle; but it came in time to speak for itself.

It’s sweet notes penetrated the Cornwallis cottage as the Fourth of July dawned. Mr. and Mrs. Cornwallis were asleep when the first note came. When the second note came Mrs. Cornwallis awoke and wondered if she were still on earth. She had dreamed of being in Heaven with Laurens and listening to a bugle call. It seemed so real to her that she shook her husband’s arm.

“The bugle! The bugle! Did you hear it? Are we in Heaven?”

“Not quite, Angeline, but I think we are happier than we have been in years and I do hear a bugle. It’s time for the cannon. Do you suppose anybody could have put it into Schwarmer’s head to have a bugle instead of a cannon?”

Ruth and Ralph were awake when the first note sounded. She was gathering up her nerves for the booming of the cannon and Ralph was saying: “I believe Miss Schwarmer would influence her father to do away with that monster if she knew how it hurt you and especially your mother.”

“She does know it, Ralph, and I believe she has done it,” exclaimed Ruth, springing up and listening intently. “Yes, Ralph, don’t you hear it? It’s a bugle! Really a bugle!”

Another note sweeter and louder greeted them.

“Yes, it is a bugle and a very fine one. What a blessed creature Adelaide Schwarmer is!” said Ralph.

Ruth could not speak. Her heart was so full of gladness, but she indulged in what Ralph called “a happy cry.”