Post Haste

That excellent lady was in a state of dreadful perturbation, as well she might be, for the house was filled with a thin smoke of very peculiar odour.

Few persons except the initiated are fully alive to the immense importance of checking fire at its commencement. The smoke, although not dense enough to attract the attention of people outside, was sufficiently so to make those inside commence an anxious search, when they should have sent at once for the fire-engine.

Three families occupied the tenement. Miss Lillycrop’s portion was at the top. A dealer in oils and stores of a miscellaneous and unsavoury kind occupied the basement.

George Aspel at once suspected and made for this point, followed by Miss Lillycrop, who bade Tottie remain in her kitchen, with the intention of keeping her at once out of danger and out of the way.

“There’s certainly fire somewhere, Pax; run, call the engines out,” said Aspel, descending three steps at a time.

Pax took the last six steps at a bound, and rushed along the street, overturning in his flight two boys bigger than himself, and a wheelbarrow.

The owner of the cellars was absent and his door locked. Where was the key? No one knew, but George Aspel knew of a key that had done some service in times past. He retreated a few steps, and, rushing at the door with all his weight and momentum, dashed it in with a tremendous crash, and went headlong into the cellar, from out of which came belching flames and smoke. Re-issuing instantly therefrom with singed hair and glaring eyes, he found Miss Lillycrop lying on her back in a faint, where the fire and smoke had floored her. To gather her up and dash into the street was the work of a moment. Scarcely less rapid was the rush of the fire, which, having been richly fed and long pent up in the cellar, now dashed up the staircases like a giant refreshed.

Meanwhile little Pax ran headlong into a policeman, and was collared and throttled.

“Now then, young ’un!”

“Fire! station!” gasped Pax.

“All right, this way—just round the corner,” said the man in blue, releasing his captive, and running along with him; but the man in blue was stout, middle-aged, and heavy. Pax outran him, saw the red lamp, found the fire-station door open, and leaped through with a yell of “Fire!” that nearly split his little lungs.

The personification of calmness in the form of a fireman rose and demanded “Where?”

Before Pax could gasp the address, two other personifications of calmness, who had been snoring on trestle-beds, dressed and booted, when he entered, now moved swiftly out, axed and helmeted. There was a clattering of hoofs outside. The double doors flew open, and the red engine rolled out almost of its own accord. More brass helmets were seen flashing outside.

“Are you sure of the address, youngster?” asked one of the imperturbable firemen, settling his chinstrap more comfortably.

“Are you sure o’ your own grandmother?” said Pax.

“You’re cheeky,” replied the man, with a smile.

“You make haste,” retorted Pax; “three minutes allowed to get under weigh. Two and a half gone already. Two-and-six fine if late, besides a—”

The whip cracked, and Pax, leaping forward, seized the side of the engine. Six brass helmets bounded into the air, and their owners settled on their seats, as the horses made that momentary pause and semi-rear which often precedes a dashing start. The man whom he had been insulting held out a hand; Pax seized it, and was next moment in a terrestrial heaven, while calmness personified sauntered into the back office to make a note of the circumstance, and resume his pipe.

Oh! it was a brief but maddening ride. To experience such a magnificent rush seemed to Pax worth living for. It was not more than half-a-mile; but in that brief space there were three corners to turn like zigzag lightning, which they did chiefly on the two near wheels, and there were carts, vans, cabs, drays, apple-stalls, children, dogs, and cats innumerable. To have run over or upset these would have been small gratification to the comparatively tender spirit of Pax, but to shave them; to graze the apple-stalls; to just scrape a lamp-post with your heart in your mouth; to hear the tremendous roar of the firemen; to see the abject terror of some people, the excitement of others, the obedient “skedaddling” of all, while the sparks from the pump-boiler trailed behind, and the two bull’s-eyes glared ahead, so that the engine resembled some awful monster rushing through thick and thin, and waving in triumph its fiery tail—ah! words are but feeble exponents of thought: it was excruciating ecstasy! To have been born for this one burst, and died, would have been better than never to have been born at all,—in the estimation of the enthusiastic Peter Pax!

A few minutes after George Aspel had borne the fainting Miss Lillycrop from the house the engine arrived. Some of the men swarmed into the house, and dived to the basement, as if fire and smoke were their natural food. Others got the engine to work in a few seconds, but already the flames had rushed into the lower rooms and passages and licked away the windows. The thick stream of water had just begun to descend on the fire, when another engine came rattling to the field, and its brazen-headed warriors leaped down to join the battle.

“Oh!” groaned Miss Lillycrop at that moment, recovering in Aspel’s arms. “Oh! Tottie—To-o-o-o-tie’s in the kitchen!”

Little Pax heard and understood. In one moment he bounded through the blazing doorway and up the smoking stair.

Just then the fire-escape came into view, towering up against the black sky.

“Hold her, some one!” cried Aspel, dropping his poor burden into the ready arms of a policeman.

“The boy’s lost!” he exclaimed, leaping after Pax.

Aspel was a practised diver. Many a time had he tried his powers under the Atlantic waves on the west of Ireland. He drew one long breath, and was in the attic kitchen before it was expended. Here he found little Pax and Tottie on the floor. The former had fallen, suffocated, in the act of hauling the latter along by the hair of the head. Aspel did not see them. He stumbled over them, grasped both in his strong arms, and bore them to the staircase. It was by that time a roaring furnace. His power of retaining breath was exhausted. In desperation he turned sharp to the right, and dashed in Miss Lillycrop’s drawing-room door, just as the fire-escape performed the same feat on one of the windows. The gush of air drove back the smoke for one moment. Gasping and reeling to the window, Aspel hurled the children into the bag of the escape. He retained sufficient power to plunge in head first after them and ram them down its throat. All three arrived at the bottom in a state of insensibility.

In this state they were borne to a neighbouring house, and soon restored to consciousness.

The firemen battled there during the greater part of that night, and finally gained the victory; but, before this happy consummation was attained, poor Miss Lillycrop’s home was gutted and her little property reduced to ashes.

In these circumstances she and her little maid found a friend in need in Miss Stivergill, and an asylum in Rosebud Cottage.

Chapter Sixteen.

Begins with Juvenile Flirtation, and Ends with Canine Cremation

The disreputable nature of the wind which blows good to nobody has been so frequently referred to and commented on by writers in general that it merits only passing notice here. The particular breeze which fanned the flames that consumed the property that belonged to Miss Lillycrop, and drove that lady to a charming retreat in the country thereby rescuing her from a trying existence in town, also blew small Peter Pax in the same direction.

“Boy,” said Miss Stivergill in stern tones, on the occasion of her first visit to the hospital in which Pax was laid up for a short time after his adventure, “you’re a good boy. I like you. The first of your sex I ever said that to.”

“Thank you, ma’am. I hope I shan’t be the last,” returned Pax languidly, for he was still weak from the effects of the partial roasting and suffocation he had undergone.

“Miss Lillycrop desired me to come and see you,” resumed Miss Stivergill. “She has told me how bravely you tried to rescue poor little Bones, who—”

“Not much hurt, I hope?” asked the boy eagerly.

“No, very little—scarcely at all, I’m glad to say. Those inexplicable creatures called firemen, who seem to me what you may call fire-fiends of a good-natured and recklessly hilarious type, say that her having fallen down with her nose close to the ground, where there is usually a free current of air, saved her. At all events she is saved, and quite well.”

“I hope I didn’t haul much of the hair out of her poor head?” said Pax.

“Apparently not, if one may judge from the very large quantity that remains,” replied his visitor.

“You see, ma’am, in neck-or-nothin’ scrimmages o’ that sort,” continued Pax, in the off-hand tone of one much experienced in such scrimmages, “one can’t well stop to pick and choose; besides, I couldn’t see well, d’ee see? an’ her hair came first to hand, you know, an’ was convenient. It’s well for both on us, however, that that six foot odd o’ magnificence came to the rescue in time. I like ’im, I do, an’ shall owe ’im a good turn for savin’ little Bones.—What was her other name, did you say, ma’am?”

“I didn’t mention any other name, but I believe it is Tottie.—Now, little Peter, when the doctor gives you leave to be moved, you are to come to me to recruit your health in the country.”

“Thank you, ma’am. You’re too good,” said Pax, becoming languid again. “Pray give my best respects to Tottie and Miss Lillycrop.”

“So small, and so pretty, and such a wise little thing,” murmured Miss Stivergill, unaware, apparently, that she soliloquised aloud.

“So big, and so ugly, and such a good-hearted stoopid old thing!” murmured Pax; but it is only just to add that he was too polite to allow the murmur to be heard.

“Good-bye, little Peter, till we meet again,” said Miss Stivergill, turning away abruptly.

“Farewell, ma’am,” said Pax, “farewell; and if for ever—”

He stopped, because his visitor was gone.

According to this arrangement, Pax found himself, not many days after, revelling in the enjoyment of what he styled “tooral-ooral” felicity—among cows and hay, sunshine and milk, buttercups and cream, green meadows and blue skies,—free as a butterfly from telegraphic messagery and other postal cares. He was allowed to ramble about at will, and, as little Bones was supposed to be slightly invalided by her late semi-suffocation, she was frequently allowed by her indulgent mistress to accompany him.

Seated on a stile one day, Pax drew Tottie out as to her early life, and afterwards gave an account of his own in exchange.

“How strange,” said Tottie, “that you and I should both have had bybies to nuss w’en we was young, ain’t it?”