“No, I guess not. We got most of the folks out before your engine got here. I’m much obliged to you. I don’t know what we’d have done if we hadn’t had both engines.”
The fire was a fierce one, and many of the families had hurried out with only a small portion of their possessions. But it was something to have escaped with their lives, for the fire was caused by the explosion of an oil stove a woman was using, and the flames spread rapidly. The woman was badly burned, as was one of her children, and they had been taken to the hospital.
“Think they can save any of it?” asked Bob of Jerry, as they stood watching, having put their automobile in a safe place.
“Not any of the tenement that’s burning, I don’t. They’ll be lucky if the rest of the block doesn’t go.”
“That’s what I think,” added Ned. “Say, hadn’t we better go back to the professor?” he asked. “Maybe he’ll think it funny of us to have gone off and left him.”
“You ought to know him better than that by this time!” exclaimed Jerry, with a laugh. “He won’t think about anything but that bug he’s trying to catch. The idea of stopping a runaway team of fire engine horses, and not knowing it! Just stopped ’em because he thought they’d trample on some insect! And then you think he’ll feel hurt if we don’t come back after him!
“Just let him alone. Sooner or later he’ll show up at one of our homes, and then we can find out what he’s doing in this neighborhood now.”
“Maybe he’s planning some expedition to South America, or some place like that, and he wants us to go with him,” said Bob. “We have had some corking times with him.”
“Nothing like that doing now,” observed Ned. “We’ve got to stick on at Boxwood Hall, I expect. Of course it’s a dandy place, and all that, but I would like a trip off into the wilds. And if we could take Professor Snodgrass along it would be dandy.”
But events were to shape themselves differently for the motor boys. Those of you who have read the previous books of the series need no introduction to Professor Snodgrass. He was a scientist of learning and attainments, and in the boys he had firm friends. They had taken him with them on nearly all of their trips, by automobile, in the airships, in the submarines, and when they journeyed in their motor boats.