The woman started to her feet, and put a big red hand to her waist, on the left side, where your heart seems to be when you are frightened or miserable. “Reginald Horace!” she cried in a terrible voice; “my Reginald Horace!” “All right,” said Bobbie, “if you mean the baby; got him out safe. Dog, too.” She had no breath for more, except, “Go on--it's all alight.” Then she sank on the ale-house bench and tried to get that breath of relief after running which people call the 'second wind.' But she felt as though she would never breathe again. Bill the Bargee rose slowly and heavily. But his wife was a hundred yards up the road before he had quite understood what was the matter. Phyllis, shivering by the canal side, had hardly heard the quick approaching feet before the woman had flung herself on the railing, rolled down the bank, and snatched the baby from her. “Don't,” said Phyllis, reproachfully; “I'd just got him to sleep.” * * * * * * Bill came up later talking in a language with which the children were wholly unfamiliar. He leaped on to the barge and dipped up pails of water. Peter helped him and they put out the fire. Phyllis, the bargewoman, and the baby--and presently Bobbie, too--cuddled together in a heap on the bank. “Lord help me, if it was me left anything as could catch alight,” said the woman again and again. But it wasn't she. It was Bill the Bargeman, who had knocked his pipe out and the red ash had fallen on the hearth-rug and smouldered there and at last broken into flame. Though a stern man he was just. He did not blame his wife for what was his own fault, as many bargemen, and other men, too, would have done. * * * * * * Mother was half wild with anxiety when at last the three children turned up at Three Chimneys, all very wet by now, for Peter seemed to have come off on the others. But when she had disentangled the truth of what had happened from their mixed and incoherent narrative, she owned that they had done quite right, and could not possibly have done otherwise. Nor did she put any obstacles in the way of their accepting the cordial invitation with which the bargeman had parted from them. “Ye be here at seven to-morrow,” he had said, “and I'll take you the entire trip to Farley and back, so I will, and not a penny to pay. Nineteen locks!” They did not know what locks were; but they were at the bridge at seven, with bread and cheese and half a soda cake, and quite a quarter of a leg of mutton in a basket.