“Yes, and with the kind heart. Don’t ever omit the kind heart, Joe, in your description of him, else you’ll only have painted half the portrait.”
“Well, but the kind heart ain’t quite so visible at first sight as the ruddy face and bald head, you know.”
“Perhaps not; but if you watched him long enough to see him act, you’d perceive the kind heart as plain as if it hung at his button-hole, and beat like a sixty-horse-power steam-engine outside his ribs instead of inside,” said the strapping young man with quite a glow of enthusiasm. “Oh, if you could only see how that old gentleman labours, and strives, and wears himself out, in his desire to rescue what they call our Street Arabs, you couldn’t help loving him as I do. But I’m wandering from the pleasant things I’ve got to tell about. Through his influence my friend Jim has obtained a good appointment on the Metropolitan Railway, which gives him a much better salary than he had in Skrimp’s office, and opens up a prospect of promotion; so, although it sends him underground before his natural time, he says he is quite content to be buried alive, especially as it makes the prospect of his union with a very small and exceedingly charming little girl with black eyes not quite so remote as it was. In the second place, you’ll be glad to hear that the directors of the insurance office with which I am connected have raised my salary, influenced thereto by the same old gentleman with the ruddy face, bald head, and kind heart—”
“Coupled with your own merits, Bob,” suggested Joe.
“I know nothing about that,” replied the strapping young man with a smile, “but these pleasant pieces of good fortune have enabled me and Jim to carry out a plan which we have long cherished—to lodge together, with Martha Reading as our landlady. In truth, anticipating some such good fortune as has been sent to us, we had some time ago devoted part of our savings to the purpose of rescuing poor Martha from that miserable needlework which has been slowly killing her so long. We have taken and furnished a small house, Martha is already installed as the owner, and we go there to-night for the first time, as lodgers.”
“You don’t say so!” exclaimed Joe, laughing; “why, Bob, you and your friend act with as much promptitude as if you had been regularly trained in the Fire-Brigade.”
“We received much of our training from it, if not in it,” returned the strapping young man with the plain but pleasant countenance. “Don’t you remember, Joe, how perseveringly we followed you in former days when I was the Bloater and he was Little Jim?”
“Remember it! I should think I do,” replied Joe. “How glad my Mary will be when she hears what you have done.”
“But that’s not all my news,” continued the Bloater, (if we may presume to use the old name). “Last, but not least, Fred has asked me to be his groom’s-man. He wrote me a very pathetic letter about it, but omitted to mention the day—not to be wondered at in the circumstances. Poor Fred, his letter reminded me of the blotted copies which I used to write with such trouble and sorrow at the training school to which my patron sent me.”
“There’s reason for the blotted letter besides the excitement of his approaching marriage,” said Joe. “He hurt his hand the last fire he attended, and it’s in a sling just now, so he must have taken it out, for temporary duty when he wrote to you. The truth is that Fred is too reckless for a fireman. He’s scarcely cool enough. But I can inform you as to the day; it is Thursday next. See that you are up to time, Bob.”