“No,” said Weejums, “there never has been before.”
“There’s a broken pane of glass in the outside window,” said Mrs. Winslow, jumping up. “The smoke is getting so thick we’d better go out in the garden.”
“I think we ought to tell somebody about it,” said Weejums.
“Why should we?” asked Mrs. Winslow, lazily. “No one else sleeps in the laundry. Besides you couldn’t get upstairs.”
“Yes, I could, through the hole where they pass the dishes in the butler’s pantry. Hannah left it open last night.”
“If I’d known that,” said Mrs. Winslow, crossly, “we could have slept in the parlor to-night. Why didn’t you—”
But at that moment a larger puff of smoke came up through the crack, and Mrs. Winslow made a leap for the window, found the broken pane of glass, and was gone. Weejums ran into the butler’s pantry, took a still higher leap to the little window, and in another minute was scratching and mewing at Mrs. Wood’s door.
“Be still, Weejums!” she called softly, so as not to wake the children. “Go downstairs, bad cat!”
“Oh, please come!” called Weejums again and again, “please, please come!”
And at last Mrs. Wood went; but before Weejums could guide her to the laundry, she had smelled the smoke, and in a few minutes the household was roused. People bundled out of their beds, and into the street just in time, before the flames came up through the laundry floor, and the engines were in the yard. The fire was soon out, owing, as the firemen said, to its having been discovered so early, and all the boarders gathered around Weejums with embraces and grateful tears.