The Jamesons | Page 3

us imperatively. "Come immediately!" said she; "if the men of this village have no head in an emergency like this, let the women arise! Come immediately."
So Mrs. Peter Jones, Mrs. Ketchum, Adeline, and I stepped into the line, and the mother boarder filled the bucket at the well, and we passed it back from hand to hand, and the boy at the end flung it into Mrs. Liscom's front entry all over her nice carpet.
Then suddenly we saw Caroline Liscom appear. She snatched the bucket out of the hands of the boy boarder and gave it a toss into the lilac-bush beside the door; then she stood there, looking as I had never seen her look before. Caroline Liscom has always had the reputation of being a woman of a strong character; she is manifestly the head of her family. It is always, "Mrs. Liscom's house," and "Mrs. Liscom's property," instead of Mr. Liscom's.
It is always understood that, though Mr. Liscom is the nominal voter in town matters, not a selectman goes into office with Mr. Liscom's vote unless it is authorized by Mrs. Liscom. Mr. Liscom is, so to speak, seldom taken without Mrs. Liscom's indorsement.
Of course, Mrs. Liscom being such a character has always more or less authority in her bearing, but that day she displayed a real majesty which I had never seen in her before. She stood there a second, then she turned and made a backward and forward motion of her arm as if she were sweeping, and directly red-shirted firemen and boys began to fly out of the house as if impelled by it.
"You just get out of my house; every one of you!" said Caroline in a loud but slow voice, as if she were so angry that she was fairly reining herself in; and they got out. Then she called to the firemen who were working the engine, and they heard her above all the uproar.
"You stop drenching my house with water, and go home!" said she.
Everybody began to hush and stare, but Tommy Gregg gave one squeaking cry of fire as if in defiance.
"There is no fire," said Caroline Liscom. "My house is not on fire, and has not been on fire. I am getting tea, and the kitchen chimney always smokes when the wind is west. I don't thank you, any of you, for coming here and turning my house upside down and drenching it with water, and lugging my furniture out-of-doors. Now you can go home. I don't see what fool ever sent you here!"
The engine stopped playing, and you could hear the water dripping off the south end of the house. The windows were streaming as if there had been a shower. Everybody looked abashed, and the chief engineer of the fire department--who is a little nervous man who always works as if the river were on fire and he had started it--asked meekly if they shouldn't bring the furniture back.
"No," said Caroline Liscom, "I want you to go home, and that is all I do want of you."
Then the mother boarder spoke--she was evidently not easily put down. "I refuse to return to the house or to allow my family to do so unless I am officially notified by the fire department that the fire is extinguished," said she.
"Then you can stay out-of-doors," said Caroline Liscom, and we all gasped to hear her, though we secretly admired her for it.
The boarder glared at her in a curious kind of way, like a broadside of stoniness, but Caroline did not seem to mind it at all. Then the boarder changed her tactics like a general on the verge of defeat. She sidled up to Mr. Spear, the chief engineer, who was giving orders to drag home the engine, and said in an unexpectedly sweet voice, like a trickle of honey off the face of a rock: "My good man, am I to understand that I need apprehend no further danger from fire! I ask for the sake of my precious family."
Mr. Spear looked at her as if she had spoken to him in Choctaw, and she was obliged to ask him over again. "My good man," said she, "is the fire out?"
Mr. Spear looked at her as if he were half daft then, but he answered: "Yes, ma'am, yes, ma'am, certainly, ma'am, no danger at all, ma'am." Then he went on ordering the men: "A leetle more to the right, boys! All together!"
"Thank you, my good man, your word is sufficient," said the boarder, though Mr. Spear did not seem to hear her.
Then she sailed into the house, and her son, her two daughters, and the grandmother after her. Mrs. Peter Jones and Adeline and her mother went home, but I ventured, since I was a sort of