CHAPTER III
THE RESCUE
The strong man demanded by Nan was forthcoming, the same with whom Annie had been gossiping to the peril of Miss Emma Harrison left alone and helpless in the burning house.
He proved to be an exceedingly strong man, and the girls were lost in admiration at the masterly manner in which he carried Miss Emma down the ladder and placed her in the arms of the penitent Annie.
Annie stood five feet eleven and a half in her stocking feet and was as strong as a man. She held the frail invalid as easily as though she had been a child, and, to do her justice, as tenderly.
Having seen Miss Emma safe, the hired man rejoined the three excited girls on the roof of the shed.
"What's going on here?" he demanded roughly. "Where's the fire?"
"There doesn't seem to be any," said Jo, remembering her bewildered thankfulness over the absence of flames in Aunt Emma's room. "It seems to be all smoke."
"Humph!" grunted the hired man.
He went to the end of the shed and called to some small boys who were beginning to gather. The house was set in a big garden and nobody else was in sight.
"One of you kids run to the next house and send in an alarm to the fire department," he commanded, then returned to where the girls were watching him eagerly.
He took a handkerchief from his pocket and began to tie it over his nose.
"What are you going to do?" demanded Sadie Appleby.
"Don't go in there!" Nan begged, catching the man's arm eagerly. "The house must be all on fire inside! You will be burned to death!"
"If there was flames, you'd have seen 'em before this," the man retorted. He brushed Nan aside, flung a leg over the sill, and the next moment disappeared within the room.
Jo, eager to explore the mystery for herself, was about to follow him recklessly when Nan seized her arm and drew her back.
"No, you don't!" cried the latter. "You have been in danger enough for one day, Jo Morley. Stay where you are!"
Even then Jo might have persisted in her attempt to enter the house, had not her anxiety for the invalid been greater than her curiosity.
"Let's get down to the ground," she proposed. "Maybe we can get into the house by the front way now. And I want to see how your Aunt Emma is, Nan."
Jo scaled down the ladder like the monkey she was on things of the sort, and the other girls followed more slowly.
On reaching the ground they found that the invalid had been taken by Annie down the road to the Jamesons' for first aid.
"But is she alive and all right?" asked Nan, shaking her informant impatiently.
The latter, a lad of about fourteen and conscious of his dignity, replied coldly:
"Oh, she's all right—no thanks to that hired girl of yours though. If I was you, I'd give her the bounce before she's a couple of hours older, that's what I'd do!"
The girls did not stop for further observations on the delinquency of Annie, but joined a group of people who were gathering on the Harrisons' front porch.
Some of these had tried to force their way into the house, but had been driven back by the clouds of smoke.
"Looks like the whole place would go up," one of them said and received a warning glance from the neighbors as Nan and her chums ran up on the porch.
One of the men, an old harness maker, barred the girls' way as they were about to enter the house.
"Better not go in there," said the harness maker, who was a kindly old man and had long been a pleasant neighbor of the Harrisons'. "There's too much smoke. It would choke you."
"A lot of smoke, but no fire!" cried Nan wonderingly. "I don't understand. Where are the flames?"
Jo, who was beginning to entertain a theory as to the true origin of the smoke, spoke with an air of decision.
"I know one thing, and that is that if the man who went in Aunt Emma's window doesn't come out soon, some one will have to go in and drag him out. He can't stand that smoke very long. I've been in it—and I know!"
"Looks like you'd been down the chimbley," chirped an old man with a wrinkled, parchment-like face and a back bent like a bow. "You got plenty of soot on you, that's one thing sartain, young woman."
"But don't you see? Some one must go in and get that man!" Jo cried desperately. "He may be lying somewhere unconscious this minute. If some one doesn't get him out, he'll die!"
She tried again to get by the man who blocked the doorway.
"Gently, gently!" cried the latter, holding her back. "I'll get him for you, Miss."
The man drew a red-spotted bandana handkerchief from his pocket and began to tie it over his nose and mouth. As he did so a smoke-stained, wild-eyed figure burst through the cloud of smoke and stood swaying in the doorway. At the same moment the clanging of a bell down the road warned all of the approach of the fire engine.
The Jamesons' hired man ripped the handkerchief from over his nose, still holding to the door to steady himself.
"Is it very bad?" cried Nan. "Is the whole house going to burn up?"
The man shook his head.
"'Tain't no fire," he said dully. "Just as I thought. All smoke. Chimney stopped up, back draft, or something."
"Glory be!" cried Sadie. "Make believe that isn't welcome news!"
Nan collapsed, shaking, against the side of the house while Jo slipped an arm through hers to steady her. Nan began to laugh hysterically.
"Did you hear him, Jo? There isn't any fire. All this f-fuss over n-nothing——"
"And the fire engines coming!" said Jo, beginning to laugh uncertainly in her turn. "The joke's on some one—either the fire department or us——"
"Both!" said Sadie. "Here's the hook and ladder, all ready for business! Won't they be disgusted when they learn that the fire's all smoke?"
They were—exceedingly so. The fire chief seemed to consider himself the victim of a practical joke and soon went off down the road in his jangling red car, his back very stiff.
Little the girls cared! Nan, who had expected to see her home go up in flames, fairly danced in the reaction from fear.
Several of the neighbors spoke in a kindly way, offering her and her family the shelter of their homes for the night should the Harrison house prove unfit for occupancy.
Nan thanked them.
"Mother went to a Ladies' Aid meeting this afternoon," she explained. "She should have been home by this time, but I suppose something has happened to detain her. When she comes I'll tell her how kind you've been."
The Jamesons' hired man lingered after the rest of the crowd had dispersed.
"I've opened all the windows to let the smoke out," he told Nan, "and as soon as I can get into the house without smothering, I'd like to have a look at your chimney and fireplaces."
"We have only two," Nan began.
"Chimneys or fireplaces?" asked the hired man, with a chuckle.
"Fireplaces." Nan was patient. "One in the back part of the living room, the other in Aunt Emma's room. I don't know how to thank you," she added gratefully. "You've been awfully good."
"Shucks, I ain't done nothing," declared the man, embarrassed. "I had a hunch what had happened by the look of the smoke. The chimney must have got all stopped up and some of the soot came down and smothered the fire and sent all the smoke out into the house."
"We ought to go and see how Aunt Emma is," Nan said anxiously, and Sadie called her attention to a small boy running down the road toward them.
"Looks like a messenger from the Jameson place," she said.
"Miss Harrison," the urchin called when he came within hailing distance, "wants to see the girl that saved her life!"