The hose company bore down upon the scene of confusion that surrounded the wrecked waggon-shed with an air of pleased expectancy. Their faces fell as they caught sight of the pitiable size of the fire; but the new chief, with quickly reviving cheerfulness, usurped dictatorship, and soon had a generous stream of water playing upon the embers. Mrs. Carter, with a last plaintive appeal to Peter to get rid of them, resumed her natural aloofness; and she and Mrs. Brainard trailed their smoke-grimed splendour toward the house, driving the vanquished braves before them. When, finally, the last spark was irretrievably dead, the duck pond was nearly dry and everything else was wet, the firemen reloaded their ladders and hose, their buckets and rubber helmets, and noisily trundled away. The Willowbrook contingent sat down and mopped their grimy brows. "Will you look at my flower-beds?" mourned Tom. "Walked right over 'em, they did." "An' will ye look at the clothes on the line?" cried Nora. "They walked slap through them wid their dir-rty hands." "Go and look at the carriage-house floor," Peter growled. "They turned a three-inch stream o' water in at the front door; it looks as if the flood o' Arrerat had struck us. If I ever ketch that lobster of a fire chief out alone, I'll teach 'im 'is dooty, I will." He paused to examine his person. "Gee! but I blistered me hands." He carried the examination further. "An' these is me best pants," he muttered. "The next time I helps along their innocint divarsions, I'll get me life insured." IV DIGNITY AND THE ELEPHANT "Come in!" Peter opened the library door and advanced with awkward hesitation. Behind his respectfully blank expression there was visible a touch of anxiety; he was not clear in his own mind as to the reason for this peremptory summons to the house. It might mean that he was to be rewarded for having saved Master Augustus's life and the contents of the waggon-shed; it might mean that he was to be censured for any one of a dozen innocent and unpremeditated faults. But Mr. Carter's expression as he turned from the writing table banished all doubt as to the meaning of the interview. His bearing contained no suggestion of honourable mention to come. "Close the door," he said dryly. Peter closed the door and stood at attention, grasping with nervous fingers the brim of his hat. Mr. Carter allowed a painful silence to follow while he sat frowning down at a newspaper spread on the table before him. Peter, having studied his master's face, lowered his troubled eyes to the headlines of the paper: COMANCHE BRAVES ON THE WAR PATH FIRE THREATENS DESTRUCTION TO JEROME B. CARTER'S ESTATE