'Maybe I shall have to go,' added Felix; 'for only think, as my good
luck would have it, Redstone went on Saturday night to see his mother
or somebody, and only came back this morning; and Mr. Froggatt
himself was "out at his box," as he calls it, so he told me this
morning to write the account of the fire for the paper, and he would
pay me for it extra, as he does Redstone.'
'Well, and have you done it?'
'I was pretty much at sea at first, till I recollected the letter I
began to Edgar yesterday night, and by following that, I made what I
thought was a decent piece of business of it.'
'Oh, did you put in the way they threw the things out at window at
Jessop's without looking what they were!' cried Lance; 'and the jolly
smash the jugs and basins made, and when their house was never on
fire at all: and how the coal-heaver said "Hold hard, frail trade
there!"'
'Well,' said Felix quaintly, 'I put it in a different form, you see.
I said the inhabitants of the adjacent houses hurled their furniture
from the windows with more precipitation than attention to the
fragility of the articles. And, after all, that intolerable ass,
Redstone, has corrected fire every time into "the devouring element,"
and made "the faithful black" into "the African of sable integument,
but heart of precious ore.
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