l shaky, but then up comes one of
these day-after-to-morrow fire-departments, like they have in them towns,
with some fine painted ladders and a nice new hose-cart, and there was
great doings with these Silases screamin' to each other a foot away
through their fire-trumpets, only the stairs had been ablaze ever since
the Prof. got up 'em, and before any one does anything the whole inside
caves in and the blaze goes way up to the sky.

"Well, of course, that settles it, you understan'--about the little Kelly
and the Prof. We drags the original Kelly away to a drug-store on the
corner of the next block, where they was workin' over the kid Prof.
saved--it was Patsy--and Kelly was crazy; but the Doc. was bringin' the
kid around all right, when one of the Miss Deveres, she has to come nutty
all to once--say, she sounded like the parrot-house in Central Park,
laughin' till you'd think she'd bust, only it sounded like she was cryin'
at the same time, and screamin' out at the top of her voice, 'Oh, he
looked so damned funny with his _mus_-tache burned off! Oh, he looked so
damned funny with his _mus_-tache burned off!'--way up high like that,
over and over. Well, so she has to be held down till the Doc. jabs her arm
full of knockouts. Honest, I needed the dope myself for fair by that time,
what with the lady bein' that way I'm 'a tellin' you, and Kelly, the crazy
Irishman--I could hear him off in one corner givin' his reg'ler stunt
about his friend, O'Houlihan, lately landed and lookin' for work, comes to
a sausage factory and goes up to the boss and says, 'Begobs!'--_you_ know
the old gag--say, I run out in the snow and looked over to the crowd
around the fire and thought of Prof. pokin' around in that dressin'-room
for Kelly's other kid, when he might 'a jumped after he got the first one,
and, say, this is no kid--first thing I knew I begin to bawl like a baby.

"Well, as I was sayin', there I am and all I can see through the fog is
one 'a these here big lighted signs down the street with 'George's Place'
on it, and a pitcher of a big glass of beer. Me to George's, at once. When
Levy himself finds me there, about daylight, I'm tryin' to tell a gang of
Silases how it all happened and chokin' up every time so's I have to have
another.

"Well, of course, we break up next day. Kelly tells me, after he gits
right again, that little Patsy was saved by havin' one 'a these here
scapulars on--he shows it to me hanging around the kid'