Billy To-Morrow’s Chums
CHAPTER I
The night was dark, the darkest he ever knew, Sydney Bremmer thought as he went his rounds to see if the place was in order. When first he came to live with Mrs. Schmitz he had to take a lantern; but now he was so accustomed to the narrow, soft lanes that led up and down the nursery between close rows of shrubs and flowers, and to the passages in the greenhouses, that he could “feel his way,” as he could in the same way tell when the temperature was right.
As for the little furnace, its own cheerful light, when he opened the doors to fill the fire box and bank the fire, not only showed the way to the coal bin, but sent long streamers of genial light into the black night, and flooded the boy’s face with a weird color that made him look like a fire spirit.
Once between noises he thought he heard something under one of the plant shelves, and called to see if it was the dog, Blitzen. No dog appeared, and everything seemed to be in place. Thinking he had been mistaken, Sydney closed the furnace, fastened the greenhouse door, and ran through the nursery gate to the porch, where he put out the milk bottles and patted Blitzen, saying good night in the silent, boyish fashion that the dog well understood.
As he entered the kitchen, very quietly he thought, a woman’s voice called from above, “That you, Seedney? How late you sit up.”
“Yes. Had trouble with my geometry. Everything’s all right.”
“So? Good! Sleep forty miles the hour till breakfast. I’ll call you. Think of nothing but rest. Good night.”