“I would!” cried Ted. “You could see it fine!”
“A fire is a terrible thing,” said Mrs. Martin. “We shouldn’t want one anywhere near us.”
“Oh, no, of course not! I don’t exactly want one,” admitted Ted. “But if one has got to come I wish it would be near our house, but not in it, so I could see it good.”
“This isn’t a very big fire,” observed Janet, when they had watched for a few minutes. “I guess it’s out now.”
“I hope so,” said her mother.
And such proved to be the case, for in a little while the firemen who had rushed into the home of Mr. Blakeson, next door to the residence of Mr. Cardwell, came out with a long, thin hose. It was the hose from the chemical engine, and not the big water hose.
“It was only a fire in the chimney,” said Mr. Martin, as he came walking back with Mr. Cardwell. “No damage done, but the folks were pretty well frightened. They put it out with chemicals.”
“How could a chimney be on fire?” Jan wanted to know. “A chimney is brick, and bricks can’t burn.”
“It isn’t the bricks that burn,” her father explained. “But when a chimney has been used a number of years it gets coated, or lined on the bricks inside, with soot. Soot contains oils and other things that burn. Finally, some day, a hot fire sets the soot inside the chimney on fire, and it burns fiercely. And if it burned long enough it would make the bricks so hot that they would set fire to the roof or the wooden parts of the house near them. That’s why a chimney fire is dangerous, even though the bricks themselves can’t burn.”
“Did they put salt on the fire?” asked Mrs. Martin.