“I looked around in the attic again, Aunt Gertrude. It’s all right up there,” he said calmly, when the customer had gone. “The floor is charred a bit where the rags were—but that’s all the damage. And the smoke’s clearing out. It didn’t get into the rooms much, because all the doors were closed.”
“We’re all so distressed about your picture, my dear,” said Aunt Gertrude, laying her hands on his arm. “I know what disappointment you must feel—and you are a very plucky boy.”
Paul looked down at her, started to say something, and then abruptly left the shop.
“But how in the world could it have started?” wondered Aunt Gertrude, for the first time. “He surely couldn’t have had the oil-stove lighted in this weather, and it couldn’t have started by itself.”
But Elise had no theory to offer, and Jane was in tears again, so Aunt Gertrude carried her mystification out to the kitchen, to see whether Anna had returned with the groceries.
At six o’clock, Mr. Lambert returned to the bosom of a highly excited family, and, at the supper table, listened with a peculiarly austere expression to the incoherent accounts of the disaster. Presently, he held up his hand.
“Come, come! I cannot find the beginning or end of all this,” he said, and then bending his gaze on Paul, added, slowly and sternly, “there was a fire to-day in the attic—where you, Paul, have been—er—working. So much I understand. But what I do not understand is—how this fire started.”
There was a silence. Jane glanced at Carl, and Carl took a drink of water.
“We hear of such things as spontaneous combustion,” pursued Mr. Lambert, “but for anything of the sort to take place, there must be certain conditions. I do not imagine that such conditions could exist—in a pile of rags—under an open window. No,” said Mr. Lambert, shaking his head, “I must discard that theory.”
Again the unpleasant silence followed these remarks. Paul, who had eaten nothing, drummed nervously on the table.