Janice Day, the Young Homemaker Part 41

"Janice!" she heard her father call.

"Yes, Daddy. I'm coming!" she cried. Then her ear came the leisurely question:

"Number, please?"

"Central! give me the Fire Department--please!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the excited girl.

"Number, please?" again drawled the unruffled Central.

"Oh, quick! Quick!" cried Janice into the instrument. "Give me the Fire Department. Our house is on fire!"

"Great heavens!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed her father from the living room. He was awake and heard Janice now.

"Do be quick, Central!" cried Janice. "The Fire De--"

"Market, two, three hundred," said Central.

"It's a wonder," thought Janice, even in her present state of mind, "that she doesn't call 'Information'!"

"Janice! Where is the fire?" called her father.

"It's the chimney. Wait, Daddy! I'll come and help yon. The kitchen chim-- Oh!"

Somebody on the wire just then said crisply: "Central Fire Station. What's wanted?"

"Fire!" shouted Janice. "Our house! Eight-forty-five Knight Street!"

"I hear you!" exclaimed the man at the other end, and Janice almost threw the receiver back on the hook, and darted into the living room.

Mrs. Carringford happened to be out. Janice, now that Bertha Warring had deserted her, was all alone in the house with the injured man.

"Oh, Daddy!" she gasped, seeing him already in his chair.

"Give me a push, child. Where is the fire? This is something new--the first time the Days were ever burned out."

"It's the kitchen chimney. But I can't get you down the front steps--"

Meanwhile she was pushing him out on the porch. People were running toward the house now and many were shouting. But it did not look like a very helpful crowd.

Just then Janice saw a wagon being driven rather wildly along the street toward the house. It was not a part of the Fire Department equipment, although she looked eagerly for that. The nearest fire station was fully half a mile from the Day house.

The children in the street scattered as the horse's pounding feet on the macadam warned them of his approach. The driver stood up, his feet braced against the dashboard, yelling to the horse to stop as he swung back on the reins.

It was Gummy!

"Hi, Janice! Your chimneys on fire!" he shouted, when he had stopped the horse.

"Well, for goodness sake!" exclaimed Janice, "doesn't he suppose we know it, with all this crowd--and noise --and everything?"

Gummy tumbled out of the covered wagon. He came down on all fours, he was in such a hurry; but he was up again in a moment.

"Hi, Janice! I can put it out, if I can get out on to that ell roof through that little window up there." he cried.

"That's the hired' girl's room," gasped Janice.

"What's he going to do? Take pails of water out there and throw them down the chimney?"

"Give the boy a chance," said daddy. "Maybe he can do something." And to Janice's amazement, her father was smiling.

Gummy ran around to the back of the wagon. He dropped the tailboard, backed around, and got a bag on his shoulders. With this he staggered toward the house.

"Oh, Gummy!" screamed Janice, "what have you got in that sack?"

"Salt," replied the boy, panting up the steps. "Half a shushal of balt. I was takin' it out to Jones's.

"Salt?" gasped Janice, in her excitement not noticing at all that Gummy had again "gummed up his speech," to quote his own expression. "Why, what good is salt? That chimney is blazing."

"Salt will do the trick. Show me the way to that window. Salt will put out a fire in a chimney better than anything else."

"Let him have his way, Janice," said her father quickly.

She thought she heard the gong of some of the fire apparatus approaching; but she was not sure. She gave Gummy a hand, and they ran upstairs with the sack of salt between them.

Here was the small room. She flung open the door and Gummy flung up the lower sash of the window. He almost dived out upon the tinned roof of the kitchen ell.

"Quick! Give me that salt I" he cried reaching in for it.

Janice helped him lift the bag out of the window. He dragged it along the roof toward the chimney that now vomited black smoke and flames in a very threatening volume. Fortunately the light wind drifted it away from the main part of the house.

"Oh, Gummy, you'll be burned to death--and then what will your mother say?" cried Janice.

Gummy was so much in earnest that he did not even laugh at this.

He dragged the sack of salt as close to the burning chimney as he dared. Then he got out his pocketknife and cut the string.

Everybody in the street below was yelling to him by this time, telling him what to do and how to do it. Gummy gave them little attention.

The smoke choked him and occasionally a tongue of flame seemed to reach for him. But Gummy Carringford possessed a good deal of pluck, and he was strong and wary for so young a boy. Shielding his face as best he could from the heat and smoke, he began to cast double handfuls of salt into the chimney.

The chimney was fortunately not as high as his head and Gummy could do this as well as a man. The soot which had gathered in the chimney (perhaps it had not been cleaned out since the house was built) was mostly at the bottom, and the flames came from down there; but the hot bricks would soon set the roof on fire, if not the walls inside the house.

The salt smothered the fire wherever it landed. It was better than sand for such a purpose, for salt is damp and seems to possess smothering qualities all its own when rained upon the flames.

Before half the contents of the bag had been thrown down the chimney the flames no longer leaped above its top. The smoke continued to roll up, and Gummy had pretty well smothered it himself when the Fire Department apparatus came clanging up to the house.

One of the fireman with a portable extinguisher rushed upstairs, got out at the small window and reached Gummy's side quickly.

"Good boy, kid," he said. "Let's give it the lad," and he began to squirt the contents of the fire extinguisher down the chimney.

Gummy staggered back and sat down, coughing. His face and hands were pretty black and he was breathless. When he got back downstairs and the firemen had declared the conflagration entirely extinguished, Gummy found himself quite a hero.