"Eleven o'clock already! Land alive! We'll have to get the fires blazing lively. Why, the folks may be here any minute now. Here, hand me one of those long sticks you've got, sonny; or rather—wait! You know how to lay a fire, don't you?"
"I reckon I've done such a thing once or twice in my lifetime," was the dry response.
"Then go ahead. You build this fire while I go upstairs and start the others," said Jerry. "After you've got this one going you can make one in the library, that red room through those curtains."
"All right."
"Step lively! Don't take all day about it."
With awkward gesture Jerry swooped up some of the logs with his long arm and disappeared into the hall above.
As for Walter, he had built too many fires in his mother's kitchen stove and started too many blazes of driftwood on the beach to be at a loss as to how to proceed. Almost in a twinkling scarlet flames were roaring up the wide-throated chimneys and he had placed fenders before them to keep in captivity any straying sparks. While he looked about for a spot in which to deposit the remaining birch sticks there was a sound of horns, a crunching of gravel, and Jerry's scurrying feet came pattering down the stairs.
"It's the folks!" he announced excitedly. "We warn't a minute too soon. Tuck those logs into the brass box; pick up your cap, laddie, and light out of here quick."
The order, alas, came too late. His Highness had only time enough to hurry the birch wood into the box and bang down the cover before flying footsteps filled the house, maids appeared from every door, and there was a blast of wind, a babel of voices, and the discomfited boy found himself face to face with his employers.
His first impression of Mr. Crowninshield, muffled to the chin in a heavy motor coat, was of a large, red-cheeked man who, although he moved with little apparent stir, nevertheless in an incredibly short interval had shaken hands with most of the servants, directed where each piece of luggage was to be put, commented on a new lock on the front door, and noticed that the clock was two minutes slow. His moving eye had also been caught by the roses on the table and he turned to ask from which garden they came.