"Keep still, Sue: I'm thinking," he replied, looking calmly and fixedly at the alarming light in the shed-window. "I can't get at it through this door very well: I guess I'll go around through the kitchen-door."
"You ain't going near it?" cried Sue, in astonishment and alarm.
"Of course I am: I can't put it out without going near it."
"You sha'n't do it! There! It's getting worse than ever! O Johnny, come in!—It's going to explode this minute!"
Johnny came in, but it was not on account of Sue's direction: he had just thought what to do.
The danger proceeded from a kerosene-lamp which stood in the summer kitchen, on a table, near the window facing the platform. It was streaming up very high, and blazing in a very remarkable and peculiar manner, as if on the point of instant explosion: the flashing and flickering were what had lighted up the kitchen so strangely.
On entering the kitchen, Johnny seized a piece of carpet which was in front of the sink, and ran with it toward the inner door of the shed.
"You sha'n't go in there, Johnny!" cried Sue. "You're going to kill yourself, and me, too, 'cause I sha'n't run away and leave you;" and she began to cry bitterly. But Johnny hurried on into the shed, and Sue dared not follow him: she was only just brave enough not to run out of the house, and leave him there to die or be horribly burned alone.
Just then Kate returned. As she stepped upon the platform, and saw the alarming spectacle, she screamed wildly, "Fire! help! help!" Just at that moment, too, a boy in the neighborhood, who had heard Sue's cries, came rushing into the yard. Hearing Kate's outcry, and seeing the blaze in the shed, he rushed into the street, shouting "Fire!" at the top of his voice, and telling everybody he met that the back part of Mr. Le Bras' house was all in a blaze. The first man who heard the news gave the signal at the alarm-box at the corner.
But before Kate or Sue could scream again, Johnny had darted through the inner door, and thrown the rug over the lamp.