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Having acknowledged the message, Bob Clazie lay down once more, gave another expostulatory grunt, and drew his blanket over him; while Joe Dashwood went home. Joe's home consisted of a small apartment round the corner of the street, within a few seconds' run of the station. Off the small apartment there was a large closet.
"Pr'aps not," replied Ned, re-lighting his pipe, and puffing between sentences, "but a man may be in a business quite to his mind and have a good-looking wife, and a babby, and health to boot, without bein' exactly safe from an attack of the blues now and then, d'ye see? `It ain't all gold that glitters. You've heard o' that proverb, no doubt?" "Well, yes," replied Clazie. "Ah.
The fire-escape had been first to reach the ground after the alarm was given, this being the instrument nearest to the scene of conflagration. It happened that night to be in charge of David Clazie, a brother of Comrade Bob.
On such distant duty, Bob Clazie and his brother David were successively sent out in different directions during the first part of the night; but they returned in the course of an hour or so Bob considerably dirtied and moistened in consequence of having had to go vigorously into action at the tail end of a fire, while David returned as he went, having found that his fire had been effectually got under before his arrival.
Joe accepted the second, swallowed the first, stretched his huge frame with a sigh of weariness, remarked to Mary that he would turn in, and in five minutes thereafter was snoring profoundly. One pleasant afternoon in spring David Clazie and Ned Crashington sat smoking together in front of the fire in the lobby of the station, chatting of hair-breadth escapes by flood and fire.
He opened his eyes, and whispered with difficulty, "Forgive you, Maggie? God for ever bless you." He could say no more, owing to excessive weakness. "Come, missus, you mustn't disturb him," said David Clazie, emerging from behind the curtains at the foot of the bed. "The doctor's orders was strict to keep 'im quiet. You'd better go into the other room, an' your brother likewise.
With that observation the Bloater and Little Jim went away to search for and appropriate some convenient place of repose for the night. Seated by the fire-side of Joe Dashwood's new abode for the old one, although not quite "burnt out," was uninhabitable Bob Clazie chatted and smoked his pipe contentedly.
The moment the call was given, Bob Clazie, having received no telegraphic "stop," had at once run to ring up the men, who, like Dashwood, had been sleeping close at hand. He rang up the driver of the engine first. At the same moment his comrade on duty had run round to the stable, where the horses stood ready harnessed, and brought them out. Thus the thing was done without a moment's delay.
He was not a moment too soon, for he found Bob Clazie, despite his fortitude and resolution, on the point of abandoning the window, where the smoke had increased to such a degree as to render suffocation imminent. "Can't stand it," gasped Bob, scrambling a few paces down the ladder. "Give us the branch, Bob, I saw where it was in fetchin' out the old woman," said Joe in a stifled voice.
"That's your sort!" cried Fred; "now then, May, don't stand jawin' there, but down with number two. Look alive!" "Ha! chips o' the old blocks, I see," said Bob Clazie, with a grin. "Well, as I was sayin', there's another class o' men, not so bad as the first, but bad enough, who are indooced to go in for this crime of fire-raisin' arson they calls it, but why so is beyond me to diskiver.
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