“That would not change stealing into a virtue. No, my boy, we must try to hit on some other way of providing for her wants.”
“The Lord will provide,” said Mrs Willis, from the bed.
She had overheard us. I hastened to her side.
“Yes, granny, He will provide. Meanwhile He has given me enough money to spare a little for your immediate wants. I will send some things, which your kind neighbour, Mrs Jones, will cook for you. I’ll give her directions as I pass her door. Slidder will go home with me and fetch you the medicines you require. Now, try to sleep till Mrs Jones comes with the food. You must not speak to me. It will make you worse.”
“I only want to ask, John, have you any—any news about—”
“No, not yet, granny; but don’t be cast down. If you can trust God for food, surely you can trust Him for protection, not only to yourself, but to Edie. Remember the words, ‘Commit thy way unto the Lord, and He will bring it to pass.’”
“Thank you, John,” replied the old woman, as she sank back on her pillow with a little sigh.
After leaving Mrs Willis I was detained so long with some of my patients that it was late before I could turn my steps westward. The night was very cold, with a keen December wind blowing, and heavy black clouds driving across the dark sky. It was after midnight as I drew near the neighbourhood of the house in which I had left Dumps so hurriedly that morning. In my haste I had neglected to ask the name of the young lady with whom I had left him, or to note the number of the house; but I recollected its position, and resolved to go round by it for the purpose of ascertaining the name on the door.
Chapter Five
Conspiracy and Villainy, Innocence and Tragedy
In one of the dirtiest of the dirty and disreputable dens of London, a man and a boy sat on that same dark December night engaged in earnest conversation.
Their seats were stools, their table was an empty flour-barrel, their apartment a cellar. A farthing candle stood awry in the neck of a pint bottle. A broken-lipped jug of gin-and-water hot, and two cracked tea-cups stood between them. The damp of the place was drawn out, rather than abated, by a small fire, which burned in a rusty grate, over which they sought to warm their hands as they conversed. The man was palpably a scoundrel. Not less so was the boy.
“Slogger,” said the man, in a growling voice, “we must do it this wery night.”
“Vell, Brassey, I’m game,” replied the Slogger, draining his cup with a defiant air.
“If it hadn’t bin for that old ’ooman as was care-taker all last summer,” continued the man, as he pricked a refractory tobacco-pipe, “we’d ’ave found the job more difficult; but, you see, she went and lost the key o’ the back door, and the doctor he ’ad to get another. So I goes an’ gets round the old ’ooman, an’ pumps her about the lost key, an’ at last I finds it—d’ye see?”
“But,” returned the Slogger, with a knowing frown, “seems to me as how you’d never get two keys into one lock—eh? The noo ’un wouldn’t let the old ’un in, would it?”
“Ah, that’s where it is,” replied Mr Brassey, with a leer, as he raised his cup to his large ugly mouth and chuckled. “You see, the doctor’s wife she’s summat timmersome, an’ looks arter the lockin’ up every night herself—wery partikler. Then she ’as all the keys up into her own bedroom o’ nights—so, you see, in consikence of her uncommon care, she keeps all the locks clear for you and me to work upon!”
The Slogger was so overcome by this instance of the result of excessive caution, that he laughed heartily for some minutes, and had to apply for relief to the hot gin-and-water.
“’Ow ever did you come for to find that hout?” asked the boy.
“Servants,” replied the man.
“Ha!” exclaimed the boy, with a wink, which would have been knowing if the spirits had not by that time rendered it ridiculous.
“Yes, you see,” continued the elder ruffian, blowing a heavy cloud of smoke like a cannon shot from his lips, “servants is wariable in character. Some is good, an’ some is bad. I mostly take up wi’ the bad ’uns. There’s one in the doctor’s ’ouse as is a prime favourite with me, an’ knows all about the locks, she does. But there’s a noo an’ unexpected difficulty sprung up in the way this wery mornin’.”
“Wot’s that?” demanded the Slogger, with the air of a man prepared to defy all difficulties.
“They’ve bin an’ got a dog—a little dog, too; the very wust kind for kickin’ up a row. ’Owever, it ain’t the fust time you an’ I ’ave met an conkered such a difficulty. You’ll take a bit of cat’s meat in your pocket, you know.”
“Hall right!” exclaimed the young housebreaker, with a reckless toss of his shaggy head, as he laid his hand on the jug: but the elder scoundrel laid his stronger hand upon it.
“Come, Slogger; no more o’ that. You’ve ’ad too much already. You won’t be fit for dooty if you take more.”
“It’s wery ’ard on a cove,” growled the lad, sulkily.
Brassey looked narrowly into his face, then took up the forbidden jug, and himself drained it, after which he rose, grasped the boy by his collar, and forced him, struggling, towards a sink full of dirty water, into which he thrust his head, and shook it about roughly for a second or two.
“There, that’ll sober you,” said the man, releasing the boy, and sending him into the middle of the room with a kick. “Now, don’t let your monkey rise, Slogger. It’s all for your good. I’ll be back in ’alf an hour. See that you have the tools ready.”
So saying the man left the cellar, and the boy, who was much exasperated, though decidedly sobered, by his treatment, proceeded to dry himself with a jack-towel, and make preparations for the intended burglary.
The house in regard to which such interesting preparations were being made was buried, at the hour I write of, in profound repose. As its fate and its family have something to do with my tale, I shall describe it somewhat particularly. In the basement there was an offshoot, or scullery, which communicated with the kitchen. This scullery had been set apart that day as the bedroom of my little dog. (Of course I knew nothing of this, and what I am about to relate, at that time. I learned it all afterwards.) Dumps lay sound asleep on a flannel bed, made by loving hands, in the bottom of a soap-box. It lay under the shadow of a beer-cask—the servants’ beer—a fresh cask—which, having arrived late that evening, had not been relegated to the cellar. The only other individual who slept on the basement was the footman.
That worthy, being elderly and feeble, though bold as a lion, had been doomed to the lower regions by his mistress, as a sure protection against burglars. He went to bed nightly with a poker and a pistol so disposed that he could clutch them both while in the act of springing from bed. This arrangement was made not to relieve his own fears, but by order of his mistress, with whom he could hold communication at night without rising, by means of a speaking-tube.
John—he chanced to bear my own name—had been so long subject to night alarms, partly from cats careering in the back yard, and his mistress demanding to know, through the tube, if he heard them; partly, also, from frequent ringing of the night-bell, by persons who urgently wanted “Dr McTougall,” that he had become callous in his nervous system, and did much of his night-work as a semi-somnambulist.
The rooms on the first floor above, consisting of the dining-room, library, and consulting-room, etcetera, were left, as usual, tenantless and dark at night. On the drawing-room floor Mrs McTougall lay in her comfortable bed, sound asleep and dreamless. The poor lady had spent the first part of that night in considerable fear because of the restlessness of Dumps in his new and strange bedroom—her husband being absent because of a sudden call to a country patient. The speaking-tube had been pretty well worked, and John had been lively in consequence—though patient—but at last the drowsy god had calmed the good lady into a state of oblivion.
On the floor above, besides various bedrooms, there were the night nursery and the schoolroom. In one of the bedrooms slumbered the young lady who had robbed me of my doggie!
In the nursery were four cribs and a cradle. Dr McTougall’s family had come in what I may style annual progression. Six years had he been married, and each year had contributed another annual to the army.
The children were now ranged round the walls with mathematical precision—one, two, three, four, and five. The doctor liked them all to be together, and the nursery, being unusually large, permitted of this arrangement. A tall, powerful, sunny-tempered woman of uncertain age officered the army by day and guarded it by night. Jack and Harry and Job and Jenny occupied the cribs, Dolly the cradle. Each of these creatures had been transfixed by sleep in the very midst of some desperate enterprise during the earlier watches of that night, and all had fallen down in more or less dégagé and reckless attitudes. Here a fat fist, doubled; there a fatter leg, protruded; elsewhere a spread eagle was represented, with the bedclothes in a heap on its stomach; or a complex knot was displayed, made up of legs, sheets, blankets, and arms. Subsequently the tall but faithful guardian had gone round, disentangled the knot, reduced the spread eagle, and straightened them all out. They now lay, stiff and motionless as mummies, roseate as the morn, deceptively innocent, with eyes tight shut and mouths wide open—save in the case of Dolly, whose natural appetite could only be appeased by the nightly sucking of two of her own fingers.
In the attics three domestics slumbered in peace. Still higher, a belated cat reposed in the lee of a chimney-stack.
It was a restful scene, which none but a heartless monster could have ventured to disturb. Even Brassey and the Slogger had no intention of disturbing it—on the contrary, it was their earnest hope that they might accomplish their designs on the doctor’s plate with as little disturbance as possible. Their motto was a paraphrase, “Get the plate—quietly, if you can, but get the plate!”
In the midst of the universal stillness, when no sound was heard save the sighing of the night-wind or the solemn creaking of an unsuccessful smoke-curer, there came a voice of alarm down the tube—
“John, do you hear burglars?”
“Oh, dear! no, mum, I don’t.”
“I’m convinced I hear them at the back of the house!” tubed Mrs McTougall.
“Indeed it ain’t, mum,” tubed John in reply. “It’s on’y that little dog as comed this morning and ain’t got used to its noo ’ome yet. It’s a-whinin’, mum; that’s wot it is.”
“Oh! do get up, John, and put a light beside him; perhaps he’s afraid of the dark.”
“Very well, mum,” said John, obedient but savage.
He arose, upset the poker and pistol with a hideous clatter, which was luckily too remote to smite horror into the heart of Mrs McTougall, and groped his way into the servants’ hall. Lighting a paraffin lamp, he went to the scullery, using very unfair and harsh language towards my innocent dog.
“Pompey, you brute!”—the footman had already learned his name—“hold your noise. There!”
He set the lamp on the head of the beer cask and returned to bed.
It is believed that poor perplexed Dumps viewed the midnight apparition with silent surprise, and wagged his tail, being friendly; then gazed at the lamp after the apparition had retired, until obliged to give the subject up, like a difficult conundrum, and finally went to sleep—perchance to dream—of dogs, or me!
It was while Dumps was thus engaged that Brassey and the Slogger walked up to the front of the house and surveyed it in silence for a few minutes. They also took particular observations of both ends of the street.
“All serene,” said Brassey; “now, you go round to the back and use your key quietly. Give ’im the bit o’ meat quick. He won’t give tongue arter ’e smells it, and one or two barks won’t alarm the ’ouse. So, get along, Slogger. W’en you’ve got him snug, with a rope round ’is neck an’ ’is head in the flannel bag, just caterwaul an’ I’ll come round. Bless the cats! they’re a great help to gentlemen in our procession.”
Thus admonished, the Slogger chuckled and melted into the darkness, while Brassey mingled himself with the shadow of a pillar.
The key—lost by the care-taker and found by the burglar—fitted into the empty lock even more perfectly than that which Mrs McTougall had conveyed to her mantelpiece some hours before. It was well oiled too, and went round in the wards of the lock without giving a chirp, so that the bolt flew back with one solitary shot. The report, however, was loud. It caused Dumps to return from Dogland and raise his head with a decided growl.
Nobody heard the growl except the Slogger, who stood perfectly still for nearly a minute, with his hand on the door-handle. Then he opened the door slowly and softly—so slowly and softly that an alarm-bell attached to it did not ring.
A sharp bow! wow! wow! however, greeted him as he entered, but he was prompt. A small piece of meat fell directly under the nose of Dumps, as he stood bristling in front of his box; and, let me add, when Dumps bristled it was a sight to behold!
“Good dog—good do–o–og,” said the Slogger, in his softest and most insinuating tone.
Dumps reduced his bark to a growl.
The footman heard both bark and growl, but, attributing them to the influence of cats, turned on his other side and listened—not for burglars, innocent man, but for the tube.
It was silent! Evidently “tired nature” was, in Mrs McTougall’s case, lulled by the “sweet restorer.” Forthwith John betook himself again to the land of Nod.
“Have another bit?” said the Slogger in quite a friendly way, after the first bit had been devoured.
My too trusting favourite wagged his tail and innocently accepted the bribe.
It was good cat’s meat. Dumps liked it. The enormous supper with which he had lain down was by that time nearly assimilated, and appetite had begun to revive. Going down on his knee the young burglar held out a third morsel of temptation in his hand. Dumps meekly advanced and took the meat. It was a sad illustration of the ease with which even a dog descends from bad to worse.
While he was engaged with it the Slogger gently patted his head.
Suddenly Dumps found his muzzle grasped and held tight in a powerful hand. He tried to bark and yell, but could produce nothing better than a scarcely audible whine. His sides were at the same instant grasped by a pair of powerful knees, while a rope was twisted round his neck, and the process of strangulation began.
But strangulation was not the Slogger’s intention. He had been carefully warned not to kill.
“Mind, now, you don’t screw ’im up too tight,” Brassey had said, when giving the boy his instructions before starting. “Dogs is vurth munny. Just ’old ’im tight and quiet till you get the flannel bag on ’is head, and then stand by till I’ve sacked the swag.”
Accordingly, having effected the bagging of the dog’s head, the young burglar went to the door, holding Dumps tight in his arms, and uttered a pretty loud and life-like caterwaul. Brassey heard it, emerged from the shade of his pillar, and was soon beside his comrade.
When Dumps smelt and heard the new-comer, he redoubled his efforts to free his head and yell, but the Slogger was too much for him.
Few words were wasted on this occasion. The couple understood their work. Brassey took up the lamp.
“Wery considerate of ’em to ’ave a light all ready for us,” he muttered, as he lowered the flame a little, and glided into the kitchen, leaving the Slogger on guard in the scullery. Here he found a variety of gins and snares carefully placed for him—and such as he—by strict orders of Mrs McTougall. Besides a swing-bell on the window shutter—similar to that which had done so little service on the scullery door—there was a coal-scuttle with the kitchen tongs balanced against it and a tin slop-pail in company with the kitchen shovel, and a watering-pan, which—the poker being already engaged to John—was balanced on its own rose and handle, all ready to fail with a touch. These outworks being echelloned along the floor rendered it impossible for an intruder to cross the kitchen in the dark without overturning one or more of them. Thanks to the lamp, Brassey steered his way carefully and with a grim smile.
At John Waters’s door he paused and listened. John’s nose revealed his condition.
Gliding up the stairs on shoeless feet the burglar entered the dining-room, picked the locks of the sideboard with marvellous celerity, unfolded a canvas bag, and placed therein whatever valuables he could lay hands on. Proceeding next to the drawing-room floor, he began to examine and appropriate the articles of vertu that appeared to him most valuable.
Not being a perfect judge of such matters, Mr Brassey was naturally puzzled with some of them. One in particular caused him to regard it with frowning attention for nearly a minute before he came to the conclusion that it was “vurth munny.” He placed the lamp on the small table near the window, from which he had lifted the ornament in question, and sat down on a crimson chair with gilded legs to examine it more critically.
Meanwhile the Slogger, left in the dark with the still fitfully struggling Dumps, employed his leisure in running over some of the salient events of his past career, and in trying to ascertain, by the very faint light that came from a distant street-lamp, what was the nature of his immediate surroundings. His nose told him that the cask at his elbow was beer. His exploring right hand told him that the tap was in it. His native intelligence suggested a tumbler on the head of the cask, and the exploring hand proved the idea to be correct.
“Brassey was wery ’ard on me to-night,” he thought. “I’d like to have a swig.”
But Dumps was sadly in the way. To remove his left hand even for an instant from the dog’s muzzle was not to be thought of. In this dilemma he resolved to tie up the said muzzle, and the legs also, even at the risk of causing death. It would not take more than a minute to draw a tumblerful, and any dog worth a straw could hold his wind for a minute. He would try. He did try, and was yet in the act of drawing the beer when my doggie burst his bonds by a frantic effort to be free. Probably the hairy nature of his little body had rendered a firm bond impossible. At all events, he suddenly found his legs loose. Another effort, more frantic than before, set free the muzzle, and then there arose on the still night air a yell so shrill, so loud, so indescribably horrible, that its conception must be left entirely to the reader’s imagination.
At the same instant Dumps scurried into the kitchen. The scuttle and tongs went down, the slop-pail and shovel followed suit, also the watering-pan, into which latter Dumps went head foremost as it fell, and from its interior another yell issued with such resonant power that the first yell was a mere chirp by contrast. The Slogger fled from the scene like an evil spirit, while John Waters sprang up and grasped the pistol and poker.
The effect on Brassey in the drawing-room cannot be conceived, much less described. He shot, as it were, out of the crimson-gilded chair and overturned the lamp, which burst on the floor. Being half full of paraffin oil it instantly set fire to the gauze window-curtains. The burglar made straight for the stairs. John Waters, observing the light, dashed up the same, and the two met face to face on the landing, breathing hate and glaring defiance!
Chapter Six
Relates a Stirring Innocent
Now it was at this critical moment that I chanced to come upon the scene.
I had just ascertained from the brass plate on the door that Dr McTougall dwelt there, and was thinking what an ugly unromantic name that was for a pretty girl as I descended the steps, when Dumps’s first yell broke upon my astonished ears. I recognised the voice at once, though I must confess that the second yell from the interior of the watering-pan perplexed me not a little, but the hideous clatter with which it was associated, and the sudden bursting out of flames in the drawing-room, drove all thoughts of Dumps instantly away.
My first impulse was to rush to the nearest fire-station; but a wild shouting in the lobby of the house arrested me. I rang the bell violently. At the same moment I heard the report of a pistol, and a savage curse, as a bullet came crashing through the door and went close past my head. Then I heard a blow, followed by a groan. This was succeeded by female shrieks overhead, and the violent undoing of the bolts, locks, and chains of the front door.
Thought is quick. Burglary flashed into my mind! A villainous-looking fellow leaped out as the door flew open. I recognised him instantly as the man who had sold Dumps to me. I put my foot in front of him. He went over it with a wild pitch, and descended the steps on his nose!
I was about to leap on him when a policeman came tearing round the corner, just in time to receive the stunned Brassey with open arms, as he rose and staggered forward.
“Just so. Don’t give way too much to your feelings! I’ll take care of you, my poor unfortunate fellow,” said the policeman, as a brother in blue came to his assistance.
Already one of those ubiquitous creatures, a street-boy, had flown to the fire-station on the wings of hope and joy, and an engine came careering round the corner as I turned to rush up the stairs, which were already filled with smoke.
I dashed in the first door I came to. A lady, partially clothed, stood there pale as death, and motionless.
“Quick, madam! descend! the house is on fire!” I gasped in sharp sentences as I seized her. “Where is your—your (she looked young) sister?” I cried, as she resisted my efforts to lead her out.
“I’ve no sister!” she shrieked.
“Your daughter, then! Quick, direct me!”
“Oh! my darling!” she cried, wringing her hands.
“Where?” I shouted in desperation, for the smoke was thickening.
“Up-stairs,” she screamed, and rushed out, intending evidently to go up.
I caught her round the waist and forced her down the stairs, thrust her into the arms of an ascending fireman, and then ran up again, taking three steps at a time. The cry of a child attracted me. I made for a door opposite, and burst it open. The scene that presented itself was striking. Out of four cribs and a cradle arose five cones of bed-clothes, with a pretty little curly head surmounting each cone, and ten eyes blazing with amazement. A tall nurse stood erect in the middle of the floor with outstretched arms, glaring.
Instantly I grasped a cone in each arm and bore it from the room. Blinded with smoke, I ran like a thunderbolt into the arms of a gigantic fireman.
“Take it easy, sir. You’ll do far more work if you keep cool. Straight on to front room! Fire-escape’s there by this time.”
I understood, and darted into a front room, through the window of which the head of the fire-escape entered at the same moment, sending glass in splinters all over us. It was immediately drawn back a little, enabling me to throw up the window-sash and thrust the two children into the arms of another fireman, whose head suddenly emerged from the smoke that rose from the windows below. I could see that the fire was roaring out into the street, and lighting up hundreds of faces below, while the steady clank of engines told that the brigade was busily at work fighting the flames. But I had no time to look or think. Indeed, I felt as if I had no power of volition properly my own, but that I acted under the strong impulse of another spirit within me.
Darting back towards the nursery I met the first fireman dragging with his right hand the tall nurse, who seemed unreasonably to struggle against him, while in his left arm he carried two of the children, and the baby by its night-dress in his teeth.
I saw at a glance that he had emptied the nursery, and turned to search for another door. During the whole of this scene—which passed in a few minutes—a feeling of desperate anxiety possessed me as to the fate of the young lady to whom I had given up my doggie. I felt persuaded she slept on the same floor with the children, and groped about the passage in search of another door. By this time the smoke was so dense that I was all but suffocated. A minute or two more and it would be too late. I could not see. Suddenly I felt a door and kicked it open. The black smoke entered with me, but it was still clear enough inside for me to perceive the form of a girl lying on the floor. It was she!
“Miss McTougall!” I shouted, endeavouring to rouse her; but she had fainted. Not a moment now to lose. A lurid tongue of flame came up the staircase. I rolled a blanket round the girl—head and all. She was very light. In the excitement of the moment I raised her as if she had been a child, and darted back towards the passage, but the few moments I had lost almost cost us our lives. I knew that to breathe the dense smoke would be certain suffocation, and went through it holding my breath like a diver. I felt as if the hot flames were playing round my head, and smelt the singeing of my own hair. Another moment and I had reached the window, where the grim but welcome head of the escape still rested. With a desperate bound I went head first into the shoot, taking my precious bundle along with me.
A fireman chanced to be going down the shoot at the time, carefully piloting one of the maids who had been rescued from the attics, and checking his speed with outspread legs. Against him I canonned with tremendous force, and sent him and his charge in a heap to the bottom.
This was fortunate, for the pace at which I must have otherwise come down would have probably broken my neck. As it was, I felt so stunned that I nearly lost consciousness. Still I retained my senses sufficiently to observe a stout elderly little man in full evening dress, with his coat slit up behind to his neck, his face half-blackened, and his shaggy hair flying wildly in all directions—chiefly upwards. Amid wild cheering from the crowd I confusedly heard the conversation that followed.
“They’re all accounted for now, sir,” said a policeman, who supported me.
The elderly gentleman had leaped forward with an exclamation of earnest thankfulness, and unrolled the blanket.
“Not hurt! No, thank God. Lift her carefully now. To the same house.—And who are you?” he added, turning and looking full at me as I leaned in a dazed condition on the fireman’s shoulder. I heard the question and saw the speaker, but could not reply.
“This is the gen’leman as saved two o’ the child’n an’ the young lady,” said the tall fireman, whom I recognised as the one into whose bosom I had plunged on the upper floor.
“Ay, an’ he’s the gen’leman,” said another fireman, “who shoved your missus, sir, into my arms, w’en she was bent on runnin’ up-stairs.”
“Is this so?” said the little gentleman, stepping forward and grasping my hand.
Still I could not speak. I felt as if the whole affair were a dream, and looked on and listened with a vacant smile.
Just at that moment a long, melancholy wail rose above the roaring of the fire and clanking of the engines.
The cry restored me at once.
“Dumps! my doggie!” I exclaimed; and, bursting through the crowd, rushed towards the now furiously-burning house, but strong hands restrained me.
“What dog is it?” asked the elderly gentleman. A man, drenched, blackened, and bloodstained, whom I had not before observed, here said—
“A noo dog, sir, Dumps by name, come to us this wery day. We putt ’im in the scullery for the night.”
Again I made a desperate effort to return to the burning house, but was restrained as before.
“All right, sir,” whispered a fireman in a confidential tone, “I know the scullery. The fire ain’t got down there yet. Your dog can only have bin damaged by water as yet. I’ll save ’im sir, never fear.”
He went off with a quiet little nod that did much to comfort me. Meanwhile the elderly gentleman sought to induce me to leave the place and obtain refreshment in the house of a friendly neighbour, who had taken in his family.
“You need rest, my dear sir,” he said; “come, I must take you in hand. You have rendered me a service which I can never repay. What? Obstinate! Do you know that I am a doctor, sir, and must be obeyed?”
I smiled, but refused to move until the fate of Dumps was ascertained.
Presently the fireman returned with my doggie in his arms.
Poor Dumps! He was a pitiable sight. Tons of hot water had been pouring on his devoted head, and his shaggy, shapeless coat was so plastered to his long, little body, that he looked more like a drowned weazel than a terrier. He was trembling violently, and whined piteously, as they gave him to me; nevertheless, he attempted to wag his tail and lick my hands. In both attempts he failed. His tail was too wet to wag—but it wriggled.
“He’d have saved himself, sir,” said the man who brought him, “only there was a rope round his neck, which had caught on a coal-scuttle and held him. He’s not hurt, sir, though he do seem as if some one had bin tryin’ to choke him.”
“My poor doggie!” said I, fondling him.
“He won’t want washin’ for some time to come,” observed one of the bystanders.
There was a laugh at this.
“Come; now the dog is safe you have no reason for refusing to go with me,” said the elderly gentleman, who, I now understood, was the master of the burning house.
As we walked away he asked my name and profession, and I thought he smiled with peculiar satisfaction when I said I was a student of medicine.
“Oh, indeed!” he said; “well—we shall see. But here we are. This is the house of my good friend Dobson. City man—capital fellow, like all City men—ahem! He has put his house at my disposal at this very trying period of my existence.”
“But are you sure, Dr McTougall, that all the household is saved?” I asked, becoming more thoroughly awake to the tremendous reality of the scene through which I had just passed.
“Sure! my good fellow, d’you think I’d be talking thus quietly to you if I were not sure? Yes, thanks to you and the firemen, under God, there’s not a hair of their heads injured.”