Kitty’s face flushed with excitement. She thought it the most romantic thing in the world that Laura should run the risk of displeasing her father by making a long journey all by herself to an unknown part of the town simply to sit by the bedside of a daring young fireman who had been injured while going into a burning building to save a human life. The paper said that he was lying in a “precarious condition,” but neither one of the two girls knew what that long word signified, and they did not dare to ask anyone. “Come up to my room with me, I’m going to get ready now,” said Laura, as she led the way into the house. A quarter of an hour later Harry, who was moodily poring over his Latin grammar and wondering whether Bruce had been severely hurt or not, saw from his seat by the window the two girls crossing the garden and disappearing through a side gate. He wondered idly where they were going to, and then he fell to thinking about how to get even with his sister for the trick she had played him that morning, and he was engaged in this manner when Mr. Reed suddenly entered the room and asked him what progress he was making with his lessons. The boy took up his book again with a sigh that was so deep that the tutor asked him if he was sick or if anything serious had happened. “No,” he replied, “nothing has happened to me, but I’m afraid something awful has happened to Bruce.” And then he told the tutor what he had read in the _Herald_, and Mr. Reed becoming very much interested went out and found the paper where the young girls had dropped it in the summer house, and then returned to his pupil’s room and said, “I’m afraid he’s badly injured and I’m very sorry for it, for he was a very manly, polite young man, and I should judge from the account in the newspaper that he had showed himself to be a brave one as well. I really think you ought to go down to the hospital and see how he is getting along.” Harry leaped to his feet, but Mr. Reed restrained him by saying firmly, “not until your lessons are finished. If you can recite them to me within an hour, we will start at once.” With this incentive to work, Harry returned to his task with such industry and enthusiasm, that when his tutor returned at the close of the hour he found his pupil able to recite his lessons without a single mistake, which was altogether an unusual condition of things with him. Then putting on his hat, Mr. Reed told Harry to accompany him and they started for the elevated railroad together. CHAPTER XXI.