“Hurray! Hurray!” shouted the boys in the crowd, and Ted could not help joining in, for this was the jolliest fire he had ever seen.
With the burst of red fire the display came to an end, the glare died away, there was no longer any popping from the fire-crackers, and all that could be seen was a lot of smoke pouring from the shed.
“I guess the worst is over,” said the fire chief, as he told the fireman, who had run from the shed when the explosions began, to put on a smoke-helmet and go back again to wet what sparks he might find. Other firemen, also wearing smoke-helmets, went with him.
“Fire’s out, Chief!” the men reported a little later. “Not much damage done.”
“That’s good,” remarked Mr. Martin.
“But there’s nothing left of that box of fireworks,” said another fireman, with a grin, as he took off his smoke-helmet.
“No, I didn’t suppose there would be,” replied the store owner. “I never should have left it there.”
“Who set off the skyrockets, Daddy?” asked Ted.
“They set themselves off after the box caught fire,” his father told him. “But how the box caught I don’t know.” And the cause of the little fire was never found out.
Really it was not much of a fire, for the only things that burned were the fireworks and the box in which they had been stored. But there was a great deal of smoke, as Ted discovered when he and his father went into the store a little later. Some firemen and police officers also went in, but the crowd was kept out. Ted felt proud that he could get in ahead of the other boys. But then, of course, it was his father’s store.