"Well, how are you to-day, lad? I thought I would just come round and see. You look pretty badly burned; and so do you, George," he added, as he followed Bill into the sitting room.
"Good-day, Mrs. Andrews."
"Good-morning, Mr. Grimstone," Mrs. Andrews said. Since her coming the Grimstones had several times come in on Sunday afternoon to Laburnum Villas. Mrs. Andrews would, indeed, have wished them to come in more frequently, for she felt much indebted to them for their kindness to George, and, moreover, liked them for themselves, for both were good specimens of their class.
"I see you were busy last night too, Mr. Grimstone; your face looks scorched; but you did not manage to get yourself burned as these silly boys did. What a blessing it is for us all that the fire did not spread!"
"Well, Mrs. Andrews, I don't think those two lads can have told you what they did, for if they had you would hardly call them silly boys."
Mrs. Andrews looked surprised.
"They told me they lent a hand to put out the fire—I think those were George's words—but they did not tell me anything else."
"They saved the building, ma'am. If it hadn't been for them there would not have been a stick or stone of Penrose's standing now; the shops and the wood piles would all have gone, and we should all have been idle for six months to come; there is no doubt about that at all."
"Why, how was that, Mr. Grimstone? How was it they did more than anyone else?"
"In the first place they discovered it, ma'am, and rung the alarm-bell; it mightn't have been found out for another five minutes, and five minutes would have been enough for the fire. In the next place, when they had given the alarm they did the only thing that could have saved the place: they got into the planing-shop and turned on the hose there, and fought the fire from spreading through the door till we got in seven or eight minutes later. It was all we could do to stop it then; but if they hadn't done what they did the planing-shop would have been alight from end to end, and the floors above it too, before the first engine arrived, and then nothing could have saved the whole lot. I can tell you, Mrs. Andrews, that there isn't a man on the works, nor the wife of a man, who doesn't feel that they owe these two lads their living through the winter. I don't know what Mr. Penrose will say about it, but I know what we all feel."