“Where is the fire, Simes?” the bell-ringer was asked as the engine rattled toward the church-door.
“Miss Persnips!”
Simes meant not the place of the fire, but the source of the information.
“Miss Persnips’s house is afire!” shouted the engine-men. It was enough. They rushed for that lady’s place, and seeing a column of smoke above her roof, concluded that its source was directly below, and stopping at a pump this side of her house, ran their hose down into the well. They were working the brakes at a lively rate and preparing for a thorough bombardment of the building, when fortunately she appeared, screaming, “Fire is over there, beyond the woods!”
The smoke had now shifted its coarse, and rolling away from Miss Persnips’s, hung in a dark, sullen cloud above the forest but a little way off.
Away went the engine and its allies, sweeping along men and boys, and also every able-bodied member of the Up-the-Ladder Club whose legs could carry him. Down past shops and houses and farms rushed the crowd, pulling along several fat men who had grasped the rope. By and by they came to a farmer in a red shirt who pointed his spectacles at them across the top-rail of the fence at the right of the road.
“Where’s the’ fire, squire?” excitedly asked the foreman.
“Fire? I don’t know of fire,” replied the farmer, coolly, “at leastways, any fire that is worth puttin’ out. I have got a bonfire in back here, and it was purty big, and its smoke you may have seen in the village. If you want to stretch your muscle and soak your hose—and that is about all you engine-people do—you may come and play on my bonfire.”
“Come and play on you” shouted an angry voice.
“Put out him” screamed another.