The cause of it all, safe in the bakery, suspended the greasing of pie-plates long enough to give her version of the row:
“We were a-sittin’ there, quiet an’ peaceful like,” she said, “when Mister Hart came along an’ made remarks, an’ George he give it back to him good. ‘Oh,’ says he, ‘you ain’t a thousand; yer only one,’ an’ he went. When he came back, George he stood up, an’ Mister Hart he says to me: ‘Ye’re not an up-stairs girl; you can be called down,’ an’ George he up an’ struck him. I didn’t wait fer no more. I just run out of the alley. Is he hurted bad?
“Who is George? He is me feller. I met him at the Hounds’ ball in Germania Hall, an’ he treated me same as you would any lady. We danced together an’ had a couple of drinks, an’ he took me home. George ain’t me steady, you know. Me regular he is to sea. See?
“I didn’t see nothin’. I hid in the wagon while I heard him callin’ names. I wasn’t goin’ in till Mr. Deevy [Policeman Devery] he came along. I told him I was scart, and he said: ‘Oh, come along.’ But I was dead scart.
“Say, you won’t forget to come to our picnic, the ‘Pie-Girls,’ will you? It’ll be great.”
HEROES WHO FIGHT FIRE
Thirteen years have passed since, but it is all to me as if it had happened yesterday—the clanging of the fire-bells, the hoarse shouts of the firemen, the wild rush and terror of the streets; then the great hush that fell upon the crowd; the sea of upturned faces, with the fire-glow upon it; and up there, against the background of black smoke that poured from roof and attic, the boy clinging to the narrow ledge, so far up that it seemed humanly impossible that help could ever come.
But even then it was coming. Up from the street, while the crew of the truck company were laboring with the heavy extension-ladder that at its longest stretch was many feet too short, crept four men upon long, slender poles with cross-bars, iron-hooked at the end. Standing in one window, they reached up and thrust the hook through the next one above, then mounted a story higher. Again the crash of glass, and again the dizzy ascent. Straight up the wall they crept, looking like human flies on the ceiling, and clinging as close, never resting, reaching one recess only to set out for the next; nearer and nearer in the race for life, until but a single span separated the foremost from the boy. And now the iron hook fell at his feet, and the fireman stood upon the step with the rescued lad in his arms, just as the pent-up flame burst lurid from the attic window, reaching with impotent fury for its prey. The next moment they were safe upon the great ladder waiting to receive them below.