lmet on the table, and, having flung himself into a
chair, seized his youngest child, a little girl, in his arms, raised her
high above his head and laughed in her face; at which the child chuckled
and crowed to the best of its ability.

Meanwhile his eldest son, Joe junior, immediately donned the helmet,
seized the poker, thrust the head of it into a bucket of water, and,
pointing the other end at a supposed fire, began to work an imaginary
hand-pump with all his might.

"It's goin' out, daddy," cried the urchin.

"Sure, he's a true chip o' the owld block," observed his mother, who was
preparing the evening meal of the family; "he's uncommon fond o' fire
an' wather."

"Molly, my dear," said the fireman, "I'd have ye kape a sharp eye on
that same chip, else his fondness for fire may lead to more wather than
ye'd wish for."

"I've bin thinkin' that same meself, honey," replied Mrs Corney,
placing a pile of buttered toast on the table. "Shure didn't I kitch
him puttin' a match to the straw bed the other day! Me only consolation
is that ivery wan in the house knows how to use the hand-pump. Ah,
then, ye won't believe it, Joe, but I catched the baby at it this
mornin', no later, an' she'd have got it to work, I do believe, av she
hadn't tumbled right over into the bucket, an' all but drownded herself.
But, you know, the station's not far off, if the house did git alight.
Shure ye might run the hose from the ingin to here without so much as
drawin' her out o' the shed. Now, then, Joe, tay's ready, so fall to."

Joe did fall to with the appetite of a man who knows what it is to toil
hard, late and early. Joe junior laid aside the helmet and poker, and
did his duty at the viands like the true son of a fireman--not to say an
Irishman--and for five minutes or so the family enjoyed themselves in
silence. After that Joe senior heaved a sigh, and said that it would be
about time for him to go and see the old lady.

"What can it be she wants?" asked Mrs Corney.

"Don't know," replied her husband. "All I know is that she's the old
lady as was bundled neck and crop out o' the first-floor windy o' the
house in Holborn by Frank Willders. She's a quare owld woman that.
She's got two houses, no less; wan over the coachmaker's shop--the shop
bein' her property--an' wan in Russell Square. They say she's rich
enough to line her coffin with goold an inch thick. Spakin' o' that,
Molly my dear, a quare thing happened to me th