Page:The railway children (IA railwaychildren00nesb 1).pdf/191

 wife was a hundred yards up the road before he had quite understood what was the matter.

Phyllis, shivering by the canal side, had hardly heard the quick approaching feet before the woman had flung herself on the railing, rolled down the bank, and snatched the baby from her. "Don't," said Phyllis, reproachfully; "I'd just got him to sleep."

Bill came up later talking in a language with which the children were wholly unfamiliar. He leaped on to the barge and dipped up pails of water. Peter helped him and they put out the fire. Phyllis, the bargewoman, and the baby—and presently Bobby, too,—cuddled together in a heap on the bank.

"Lord help me, if it was me left anything as could catch alight," said the woman again and again.

But it wasn't she. It was Bill the Bargeman, who had knocked his pipe out and the red ash had fallen on the hearth-rug, and smouldered there and at last broken into flame. Though a stern man he was just. He did not blame his wife for what was his own fault as many bargemen, and other men, too, would have done.