“Good-bye, my love,” said Miss Tippet, bustling round her friend. “I’m so glad to have met you, and I hope you’ll come and see me soon; 6 Poor-thing Lane, remember. Come whenever you please, dear Mrs Denman. Yes, yes, time does indeed fly, as you say; or as my friend, Sir Archibald What’s-his-name used to remark, ‘Tempit fugus something re-what’s-’is-name.’ Good-bye, dear Mrs Denman.”
While the ladies were thus engaged, one whom the Eagle would have tossed her beak at with supreme contempt was enjoying himself in the bosom of his family. This was none other than Joe Corney himself, who, having received a “stop” for a distant fire, had looked in on his wife to tell her of the note he had received from Mrs Denman.
The family bosom resided in a small portion of a small house in the small street where the fire-engine dwelt.
Joe had laid his helmet on the table, and, having flung himself into a chair, seized his youngest child, a little girl, in his arms, raised her high above his head and laughed in her face; at which the child chuckled and crowed to the best of its ability.
Meanwhile his eldest son, Joe junior, immediately donned the helmet, seized the poker, thrust the head of it into a bucket of water, and, pointing the other end at a supposed fire, began to work an imaginary hand-pump with all his might.
“It’s goin’ out, daddy,” cried the urchin.
“Sure, he’s a true chip o’ the owld block,” observed his mother, who was preparing the evening meal of the family; “he’s uncommon fond o’ fire an’ wather.”
“Molly, my dear,” said the fireman, “I’d have ye kape a sharp eye on that same chip, else his fondness for fire may lead to more wather than ye’d wish for.”
“I’ve bin thinkin’ that same meself, honey,” replied Mrs Corney, placing a pile of buttered toast on the table. “Shure didn’t I kitch him puttin’ a match to the straw bed the other day! Me only consolation is that ivery wan in the house knows how to use the hand-pump. Ah, then, ye won’t believe it, Joe, but I catched the baby at it this mornin’, no later, an’ she’d have got it to work, I do believe, av she hadn’t tumbled right over into the bucket, an’ all but drownded herself. But, you know, the station’s not far off, if the house did git alight. Shure ye might run the hose from the ingin to here without so much as drawin’ her out o’ the shed. Now, then, Joe, tay’s ready, so fall to.”
Joe did fall to with the appetite of a man who knows what it is to toil hard, late and early. Joe junior laid aside the helmet and poker, and did his duty at the viands like the true son of a fireman—not to say an Irishman—and for five minutes or so the family enjoyed themselves in silence. After that Joe senior heaved a sigh, and said that it would be about time for him to go and see the old lady.