“Ho! Ho!” laughed Ted. “I’ve heard of putting salt on the tail of a wild bird to tame it, but I didn’t know you put salt on a fire.”
“Yes, you do, sometimes,” stated Mr. Martin. “Salt is said to put out chimney fires. Some sort of chemical is released when salt is heated, and this smothers the fire in the chimney. But the firemen put this fire out, and without any damage being done.”
“I’m glad of that,” said Mrs. Martin, as they went back to the house.
“And I’m glad the fire wasn’t in my house,” remarked Mr. Cardwell. “If it had been, and if those albums had burned, with those pictures of my children and my brother’s boy—pictures we never could get again—my wife and I would have felt very sad. My wife thinks a great deal of those albums. I’ve been planning for a long time to send them out to my brother, but we never dared trust them to any one before. I hope you will take good care of them, Mr. Martin.”
“Oh, I surely will, Mr. Cardwell,” replied the father of the Curlytops.
That night, when the children were in bed and Mr. and Mrs. Martin were quietly talking over their plans for the coming tour around the country, Mrs. Martin said:
“I almost wish you didn’t have to bother with those two big albums of pictures, Dick!”
“Why?” asked her husband.
“Oh, just suppose something happens to them?”
“Nothing will happen to them. I’ll pack them in that small chest I have down at the store, and we’ll put it in the back of the auto. When we reach Bentville I’ll give the albums to Mr. Cardwell’s brother. That will end the matter.”