Then, while the crowd that had been as silent as death cracked their throats with applause, Dick spoke to Holtzer on a private matter.
It so happened that a young man who did “space” for a morning paper lived on the top floor of the flat-house opposite, and saw the whole thing through an opera-glass. He hustled into his clothes and got down to the street, working a talk out of Dick by the plea that he needed the money.
The reporter was delighted. The incident had the two elements of daring and mother-wit that can be made into the long story of profit.
“How did you ever come to think of using your coat like that?” he asked.
“Why, a feller I knew when I was a kid in the country saved himself from drownding that way,” replied Carter. “He fell through the ice miles from anybody, and if he hadn’t froze the end of his muffler fast, and so anchored himself, he’d ’a’ been a gone gosling all right. That thing come back to me on the minute.”
That is why the first thing Fireman Carter saw in his morning paper was his own name. He started guiltily at the sight and threw the sheet away. No maiden caught en déshabillé could have been more abashed; and, as the maiden afterward might wonder how she did look—was it so very awful?—so did Dick. He picked the paper up again stealthily and read all about it, lost in wonder at the end. To the applause that came his way he turned an inattentive ear, thus giving further life to the old idea that the bravest are always the most modest, which looks like a double superlative and is no more true than that they are always the fattest, or anything else. The bravest are usually the most courageous, and there ends deduction. Dick was busy with his own thoughts—something troubled him. A strange thing was the fact that though his friend Holtzer scrupulously gave him every credit he did not seek his society.
The frown of hard thinking was on Dick’s brow all day. At night he asked for a few hours off and got them.
Mary Ellen met him at the door. “Oh, Dick!” she cried and gulped. “Ain’t you just grand, though!” she said, and looked at him with beatified gray eyes.
Here was golden opportunity. The proper play for Fireman Carter was to reach out his strong arms and gather Mary Ellen then and there, but he did nothing of the sort. He seemed distrait and worried.
To her anxiety, he seated himself on the sofa and fumbled his hat.