Page:Arthur Stringer - Twin Tales.djvu/15

come down. It began to rain, later on, but this didn't matter. What really mattered was the arrival of Ladder-Truck Number Three of the Tuxedo Fire Department. That was a great hour in the life of our over-ennuied Teddie, who, in fact, formed so substantial a friendship with those helmeted heroes that she was thereafter permitted to slide down the polished brass pole which led from the sleeping-quarters to the ground floor of the Fire Hall. So active was her interest in their burnished apparatus, and so dominating grew her hunger to hear the great red motors roar and see the Ladder-Truck wheels strike fire as they took the car-rails at the Avenue-crossing, that she turned in a quite unnecessary alarm. The resultant spectacle she regarded as almost as satisfying as the Chariot Race in Ben-Hur. For this offense, however, she was first severely reprimanded and later confined to the Lilac Room, where she locked herself in the old nursery bathroom and proceeded to flood the marble basin therein, reveling in the primitive joy of running water until the