Mrs. Stirling was pale and sorrowed. She had grown older in a single night, but the calm resignation in her gentle face assured Bart that they would be of one mind in taking up their new burdens of life in a practical, philosophical way.
"Poor father!" he murmured brokenly. Then he added: "Mother, I want you to go in and get some rest, and try not to take this too hard. I will attend to everything there is to do about the express office."
"I don't see what there can be to do," she responded in surprise. "Everything is burned up, your father will never be able to resume his position. We are through with all that, I fancy."
"There is considerable to do," asserted Bart in a definite tone that instantly attracted his mother's attention because of its seriousness. "Father is a bonded employee of the express service. Their business doesn't stop because of an accidental fire, and they have a system to look after here that must not be neglected. I know the ropes pretty well, thanks to father, and I think it a matter of duty to act just as he would were he able to be about, and further and protect the company's interests. Outside of that, mother," continued the boy, earnestly, "you don't suppose I am going to sit down idly and let things drift at haphazard, with the family to take care of and everything to be done to make it easy and comfortable for father."
A look of pride came into the mother's face. She completely recognized the fidelity and sense of her loyal son, allowed Bart to lead her into the house, and tried to be calm and cheerful when he bade her good-bye, and, evading celebrating groups of his boy friends, made his way down to the ruined express shed.
A heap of still smouldering cinders and ashes marked the site. Bart stood silently ruminating for some minutes. He tried to think things out clearly, to decide how far he was warranted in acting for his father.
"I don't exactly know what action the express people usually take in a case of this kind," he reflected, "nor how soon they get about it. I can only wait for some official information. In the meantime, though, somebody has got to keep the ball rolling here. I seem to be the only one about, and I am going to put the system in some temporary order at least. If I'm called down later for being too officious, they can't say I didn't try to do my duty."
Bart set briskly at work to put into motion a plan his quick, sensible mind had suggested.
About one hundred feet away was a rough unpainted shed-like structure. He remembered the time, several years back, when the express office had been located there.
It was, however, forty feet from any tracks, and for convenience sake, when the railroad gave up the burned building which they had occupied for unclaimed freight storage, it had been turned over to the express people.