Aren't you glad, duke?
Do get a good seat before the gas is turned down." The company crowded into the big bay-window, and endured the extinction of the light with great good-humour.

Indeed, a certain gentleman who entered the room at this particular juncture, seeing nothing, but hearing the laughter and talk, said to himself that this was as merry an occasion as it had been his lot to participate in.
The dim form of Tom might be seen hovering without, armed with a bull's- eye lantern, at which he diligently kindling matches, which refused to stay in long enough to ignite the refractory fireworks.
"Never mind," said he to himself, "they'll like it when they do go off." So they did.

After a quarter of an hour's waiting one of the Roman candles went off with vast _eclat_, and after it two crackers simultaneously gave chase to the operator half-way round the lawn.

One of the Catherine-wheels was also prevailed upon to give a few languid rotations on its axis, and some of the squibs, which had unfortunately got damp, condescended, after being inserted bodily into the lantern, to go off.

Presently, however, the wind got into the lantern, and the matches being by this time exhausted, and the starlights refusing to depart from their usual abhorrence for spontaneous combustion, the judicious Tom deemed it prudent to pronounce this part of the entertainment at an end.
"All over!" he shouted through the window.