“Seen old Rumbold?” cried Mr. Polly, approaching Mr. Gambell.
“Gone over Downford for a walk,” said Mr. Gambell. “He told me! But look ’ere! We ’aven’t got the key!”
“Lord!” said Mr. Polly, and regarded the china shop with open eyes. He knew the old woman must be there alone. He went back to the shop front and stood surveying it in infinite perplexity. The other activities in the street did not interest him. A deaf old lady somewhere upstairs there! Precious moments passing! Suddenly he was struck by an idea and vanished from public vision into the open door of the Royal Fishbourne Tap.
And now the street was getting crowded and people were laying their hands to this and that.
Mr. Rusper had been at home reading a number of tracts upon Tariff Reform, during the quiet of his wife’s absence in church, and trying to work out the application of the whole question to ironmongery. He heard a clattering in the street and for a time disregarded it, until a cry of Fire! drew him to the window. He pencilled-marked the tract of Chiozza Money’s that he was reading side by side with one by Mr. Holt Schooling, made a hasty note “Bal. of Trade say 12,000,000” and went to look out. Instantly he opened the window and ceased to believe the Fiscal Question the most urgent of human affairs.
“Good (kik) Gud!” said Mr. Rusper.
For now the rapidly spreading blaze had forced the partition into Mr. Rumbold’s premises, swept across his cellar, clambered his garden wall by means of his well-tarred mushroom shed, and assailed the engine house. It stayed not to consume, but ran as a thing that seeks a quarry. Polly’s shop and upper parts were already a furnace, and black smoke was coming out of Rumbold’s cellar gratings. The fire in the engine house showed only as a sudden rush of smoke from the back, like something suddenly blown up. The fire brigade, still much under strength, were now hard at work in the front of the latter building; they had got the door open all too late, they had rescued the fire escape and some buckets, and were now lugging out their manual, with the hose already a dripping mass of molten, flaring, stinking rubber. Boomer was dancing about and swearing and shouting; this direct attack upon his apparatus outraged his sense of chivalry. The rest of the brigade hovered in a disheartened state about the rescued fire escape, and tried to piece Boomer’s comments into some tangible instructions.
“Hi!” said Rusper from the window. “Kik! What’s up?”
Gambell answered him out of his helmet. “Hose!” he cried. “Hose gone!”
“I (kik) got hose!” cried Rusper.