The village fire apparatus had done its best, and departed, and the tenants of the two-family house were assembled in the Gayles’s sitting room, dejected, weary, and silent. Bess lay on the sofa, still weak and[Pg 502] shaken. Angelina was looking over a mass of sodden papers which had once been a portfolio of drawings, and the professor was helping her. Tom Tench sat hunched in an armchair, staring gloomily before him.
The curtains were scorched rags. Through a hole chopped in the ceiling water was still dripping, and the room was devastated; but the worst damage had occurred upstairs. The flames from Tom Tench’s papers heaped upon the ash can had mounted upward, and had caught the curtains at a window that happened to be open. It was bad enough down here, but upstairs there was stark ruin.
“I wonder where Alan is,” said Angelina. “He drove down to the village—to buy something, I suppose; but it’s so late!”
“As a matter of fact,” Tom Tench told her curtly, “he went to find a doctor. He was hurt.”
“Hurt!” cried Angelina and Bess together. “Hurt!” they repeated.
“That’s what I said. He hurt himself. He came back in here—in this jungle—this old curiosity shop—”
“Mr. Tench!” said the professor.
“Oh, it’s your room,” said Tench. “If you like it this way—but Alan fell over one of these antique doodads and cut his head.”
“Boys!” cried Miss Smith, greatly distressed. “Boys!”
The professor glanced up. It was a long time since he had been classified as a boy, and it was pleasing.