"Have you a long ladder—one that will reach to the roof—so we can climb up and pull a hose to the chimney top?" asked the fireman, while the wind blew a swirl of black smoke around those on the porch.
"A long ladder? Oh, I don't know—I—oh, good land! I turned the water off instead of on," cried Jerry, as he looked at the nozzle of the garden hose which he had laid down on the porch. Not even a trickle was coming from it now.
"Never mind that! Get us a ladder!" cried the fireman. "Ours is broken, and if we don't douse this chimney pretty soon there'll be a bad blaze."
"What is it you want?" cried a man, making his way to the stoop through a crowd of people in the yard around the Bunker house. "What's the trouble? Why don't somebody get on the roof with a hose?"
"Because we have no ladder long enough to reach there!" the fireman answered. "If only somebody could climb up he might——"
"Get me a piece of clothesline, and I'll climb up!" cried the man, taking off his coat. And as Mrs. Bunker turned to look more closely at him she gave a cry of surprise.
"Oh, Captain Ben!" exclaimed Mrs. Bunker.
CHAPTER III
THE INVITATION
"Oh, ho! So you know me then, do you?" cried the man who had so suddenly and unexpectedly appeared and offered to climb to the roof of the house where the chimney was on fire.