“I hope he’ll not be knocked out from playing that game with us Saturday,” Steve took occasion to say.
“Oh! Fred’s made of tough stuff,” asserted Toby, the wish being father to the thought; “he’ll recover all right. I only hope they’ve got their goods covered by insurance. It’d be pretty rocky if they didn’t, let me tell you. Nearly everything is gone, I’m afraid. Fred did manage to drag a little out, but that fire is bound to eat up the balance, no matter what the firemen can do to throw water inside.”
Jack suddenly discovered that the man whom he had seen talking with Fred was pushing his way through the group. He acted too as though he might be deeply interested in matters, for he shoved folks aside with an air that would not stand for a refusal to allow him free passage. Toby discovered him at about the identical moment.
“Look who’s here, Jack!” he muttered, tugging at the other’s coat sleeve. “Now, what under the sun’s gone and fetched that duck out here to bother Fred again? We really ought not allow such a thing, Jack. The nerve of the slick sport to push his way in to where Fred lies there.”
“Just hold your horses, will you, Toby?” Jack told him. “As yet we don’t know anything about that man, who or what life is, and the nature of his business with Fred. There, you see the boy seems to be glad to have him around. Why, the man has gripped his hand. He seems to be a whole lot excited, for he’s questioning Fred as if he wanted to make sure everybody was safe out of the cottage.”
“I wonder if they are?” remarked Toby. “I’ve seen little Barbara, and here’s our comrade, while I reckon I glimpsed Mrs. Badger over there among those women; but how about the crippled girl, Jack? Anybody seen her around?”
A fresh thrill seized Jack’s heart in a grip of ice. Of course it was almost silly to suspect that the cripple could have been forgotten in all the excitement; but anything is liable to happen at a fire, where most people lose their heads, and do things they would call absurd at another time.
“Fred would be apt to know, I should think,” suggested Steve, anxiously, casting an apprehensive glance in the direction of the burning house, and mentally calculating just what chance any one still inside those walls would have of coming out alive.
“Unless he was rattled in the bargain,” said Jack. “Lots of people leave things for others to do. Fred may have thought his mother would fetch Lucy out; and on her part she took it for granted Fred had taken care of his sister the first thing.”
“Gee whiz! I wonder, could that happen, and the poor thing be in there right now,” Toby exclaimed, looking horrified at the idea.