versight
of the family.

The girls raced up the two flights. They smelled the smoke strongly as
they mounted the second stairway to the garret. Then they heard
voices.

"They've got it right in the old lumber room, Jess!" panted Amy.

"But why don't they give the alarm?"

"Trying to put it out themselves. We ought to have brought buckets!"

"There is no water on this floor!"

Amy banged open the door of the big room in which they knew, by the
arrangement of the outside wires, Bob and Fred must have set up the
radio set. Amy plunged in, with Jessie right behind her. The room was
unpleasantly filled with smoke.

"Why don't you put it out?" shrieked Amy, and then began to cough.

"Hullo!" Bob Stanley exclaimed out of the smother. "We want to put it
in, not out. Hullo, Jess. You here, too?"

"The fire! The smoke!" gasped Jessie.

"Shucks," said Fred, who was down on his knees poking at something.
"We can't have the windows open, for the rain is beating this way.
We've got to solder this thing. Did you have trouble with yours,
Jess?"

"Sweetness and daylight!" groaned a voice behind them.

Dr. Stanley stood in the doorway. He was a heavy man, and mounting the
stairs at such a pace tried his temper as well as his wind.

"Is _this_ what started you girls off at such a tearing pace? Why, the
boys borrowed that soldering outfit from the plumber. It's all
right."

"I am so sorry we annoyed you," said Jessie, contritely.

But Amy had begun to laugh and could say nothing. Only waved her hands
weakly and looked at the clergyman, whose cap was much more over his
ear than before.

"Right in the middle of Sunday's sermon, young ladies," said the
minister, with apparent sternness. "If that sermon is a failure, Amy
and Jessie, I shall call on one of you girls--perhaps both of you--to
step up into the pulpit and take my place. Remember that, now!" and he
marched away in apparent dudgeon; but they heard him singing "Onward
Christian Soldiers" before he got to the bottom of the upper flight of
stairs.

"But it certainly was a great to-do," murmured Jessie, as she tried to
see what the boys were doing.

She was able to advise them after a minute. But Amy insisted upon
opening one of the windows and so getting more of the smoke out of the
long room.

"You boys don't even know how to make a fire in a fire-pot without
creating a disturbance," she said.

Nell came up from the kitchen where she had been consulting the