“We can’t spare them yet; we shall not use them, but it is well to hear all sides of a question.”

CHAPTER VII.

TRUTH, POETRY AND ROOFS.

“How the wind does blow!” said Jill, as she laid aside Aunt Melville’s latest, and Jack laid another log into the open stove.  “It is a genuine ‘gale from the northeast.’”

“So it is, and that reminds me,” Jack exclaimed, jumping up, “that a driving rain from the northeast always gets the better of the attic window over the guest-room.  There’s something mysterious about that window,” he explained.  “It opens like a door; I believe they call it a ‘casement’ window, and in such a storm as this I have to keep sopping up the water that blows in.  I had a carpenter look at it, but he said it couldn’t be fixed without making a new one or fastening it up so it couldn’t be opened at all.  We don’t have a northeast rain-storm very often, and that’s the only window that ever leaks—­except the skylight and the round one in the west gable which is hung at the top to swing inward and couldn’t be expected to hold water.”

Jill found some towels, and they hurried to the attic to “sop up” the rain that was driving under the sash and had already made its mark on the ceiling below.  Then they examined the skylight and the round window, and just as they were about to descend perceived a smell of burning wood.  Jack rushed down to the sitting-room, telling Jill to fly for a pail of water, found the wall beside the stove-pipe very hot, ran for an axe, and, smashing a hole through the lath and plastering, discovered a bit of wood furring to which the laths had been nailed resting directly against the sheet iron pipe.  Catching the pail of water which Jill was about to pour into the stove, he cooled the hot pipe and extinguished the wood about to burst into flame, the smoke of which, rising beside the chimney to the attic, had warned them of the danger below.  He then cut away around the pipe till the solid brick chimney was exposed, gathered up the rubbish, piling the chips upon the fire in the stove, and lay back in his chair, evidently enjoying the situation.

“How can you be so reckless, Jack, as to keep a fire in such a chimney?”

“The chimneys are all right, my dear.  I took special pains with them when the house was built.  The only danger there ever was lay in that little piece of inch board that happened to be too near the pipe.”

“And how are we to know what other little pieces of board may be too near?  I think it’s a very dangerous house to live in.  If we hadn’t gone up to the attic when we did it would have been all in flames.”

“And we shouldn’t have gone to the attic at all if my windows had been proof against the east wind.”

“No, nor would you have known we were having a gale from the northeast if I hadn’t quoted the ‘Wreck of the Hesperus.’”

[Illustration:  NO CONCEALMENT OR DISGUISE.]