ar
breakfast we get in the week."

Just as they had finished their meal there was a knock at the door. It
was Bob Grimstone. Bill opened the door.

"Well, how are you to-day, lad? I thought I would just come round and
see. You look pretty badly burned; and so do you, George," he added,
as he followed Bill into the sitting room.

"Good-day, Mrs. Andrews."

"Good-morning, Mr. Grimstone," Mrs. Andrews said. Since her coming the
Grimstones had several times come in on Sunday afternoon to Laburnum
Villas. Mrs. Andrews would, indeed, have wished them to come in more
frequently, for she felt much indebted to them for their kindness to
George, and, moreover, liked them for themselves, for both were good
specimens of their class.

"I see you were busy last night too, Mr. Grimstone; your face looks
scorched; but you did not manage to get yourself burned as these silly
boys did. What a blessing it is for us all that the fire did not
spread!"

"Well, Mrs. Andrews, I don't think those two lads can have told you
what they did, for if they had you would hardly call them silly boys."

Mrs. Andrews looked surprised.

"They told me they lent a hand to put out the fire--I think those were
George's words--but they did not tell me anything else."

"They saved the building, ma'am. If it hadn't been for them there
would not have been a stick or stone of Penrose's standing now; the
shops and the wood piles would all have gone, and we should all have
been idle for six months to come; there is no doubt about that at
all."

"Why, how was that, Mr. Grimstone? How was it they did more than
anyone else?"

"In the first place they discovered it, ma'am, and rung the
alarm-bell; it mightn't have been found out for another five minutes,
and five minutes would have been enough for the fire. In the next
place, when they had given the alarm they did the only thing that
could have saved the place: they got into the planing-shop and turned
on the hose there, and fought the fire from spreading through the
door till we got in seven or eight minutes later. It was all we could
do to stop it then; but if they hadn't done what they did the
planing-shop would have been alight from end to end, and the floors
above it too, before the first engine arrived, and then nothing could
have saved the whole lot. I can tell you, Mrs. Andrews, that there
isn't a man on the works, nor the wife of a man, who doesn't feel that
they owe these two lads their living t