e "Cataract," which was not a "steamer," but a
hand-engine. To belong to the "Cataract" it was necessary to own a red
flannel shirt, a good pair of lungs, and a nimble pair of legs. The
shirt--did that mean fire? The lungs enabled one to do all the "hollering"
that might be necessary. The legs were still more essential, that the
engine might move with proper speed to a fire, and this was at a
neck-breaking pace. As the engine company had many alarms to answer, some
of them purposely raised to enable the company to "show off"--so Simes
Badger said--the legs of a Cataract-boy were not the least valuable of his
fire-apparatus. And then it did seem as if the company all took a fiendish
delight in going "like mad" by the homes of old women and all single
ladies like Miss Persnips, tossing their red helmets--I omitted this
essential piece of property--directing at the windows defiant glances, and
all the while their sharp, cracked engine-bell went up and down, over and
over, as if it were an insane acrobat.

"Fire! Fire!" screamed a female voice, one afternoon. The screamer was
Miss Persnips.

"Where, where?" shouted Simes Badger.

"O, there, there! I know it must be," was the answer.

That was all Simes wanted, and especially as Mr. Walton was holding a
service at St. John's. If Simes could excite a neighborhood, and also
create a sensation in church, he was happy. He now rushed into the
church-vestibule, and then into the bell-tower, and seizing the rope
pulled it as if the small-pox had broken out and attacked every other
person in the community. Simes being the one to make the bell boom,
"Danger!" he gave evidence that this one person certainly was not
afflicted with the malady.

In just two minutes from the first rap on the bell, Will Somers, leaving
behind him a caldron of boiling herbs, was at the door of the
engine-house, and unlocking it, had seized the long rope attached to the
engine. There were enough who joined him to rush out into the street the
clumsy machine. There they received large re-enforcements.

"Where is the fire?" bawled the foreman.

Nobody knew.

"Where is the fire, Simes?" the bell-ringer was asked as the engine
rattled toward the church-door.

"Miss Persnips!"

Simes meant not the place of the fire, but the source of the information.

"Miss Persnips's house is afire!" shouted the engine-men. It was enough.
They rushed for that lady's place, and seeing a column of smoke above her
roof