"Excuse me for getting into your bed, Jumbo. You are perfectly welcome to mine."
XVI
But, speaking of cold, you ought to hear about the great fire company that was organized at the Academy.
The town of Kingston was not large enough or rich enough to support a full-fledged fire department with paid firemen and trained horses. It had nothing but an old-fashioned engine, a hose-cart, and a ladder-truck, all of which had to be drawn by two-footed steeds, the volunteer firemen of the village.
The Lakerimmers had not been in Kingston many weeks before they heard the fire-bell lift its voice. It was not more than twenty minutes before the Kingston fire department appeared galloping along the rough road in front of the campus at a fearsome speed of about six miles an hour.
Several of the horses wore long white beards, and others of them were so fat that they added more weight than power to the team.
Such of the academicians as had no classes at that hour followed these champing chargers to the scene of the fire.
It turned out to be a woodshed, which was as black and useless as a burnt biscuit by the time the fire department arrived.
But the Volunteers had the pleasure of dropping a hose down the well of the owner of the late lamented woodshed, and pumping the well dry. The Volunteers thus bravely extinguished three fence-posts that had caught fire from the woodshed, and then turned for home, proud in the consciousness of duty performed. They felt sure that they had saved the village from a second Chicago fire.
Jumbo said that the department ought not to be called the Volunteers, but the Crawfishes. B.J., who had a scientific turn of mind, said that he had an idea for a great invention.