Mary Emma & Company

by Ralph Moody

  “That sounds grand, but don’t bother with it, Gracie,” Mother said. “I’m just too dirty to think of putting a cup to my lips. By the way, did you draw the bath water? If you did, you might let it run out and draw a fresh, warm tub. We’ll be through here just as soon as Ralph has this big clinker broken and we can light our fire.”

  The clinker didn’t break very easy, and I had a lot of trouble in getting it loose from the grate. They seemed to be welded together, and when I’d finally pried them apart I found that the long center grate was cracked right across the middle. The two halves fell into the ash pit when I freed them. It took me another half-hour to put them back into place and prop them up from the bottom with tin cans.

  “There!” Mother said as I crawled out for the last time. “It was a lot of hard work, but it was probably worth it. With a nice clean furnace there is no reason why we can’t have a bright fire going here in a few minutes. By the time we’ve taken our baths and changed our clothing the whole house will be lovely and warm. Now you put the paper in—lots of it. Crumple it all up, and tear it a little bit so the match will catch quickly. That’s it! Now put it right in the center of the grate and lay the kindling in around it, tepee fashion. We’ll put the coal on as soon as the flame comes up bright and clear.”

  The flame didn’t come up bright and clear. When I leaned in and held a match under the paper a lazy, smoky flame flickered along the crumpled edges, crawled away toward the middle of the heap as if it were ashamed of itself, and then went out. But the smoke didn’t. It rose in billows, and shutting the furnace door didn’t do any good. Smoke streamed out of the holes where the draft plate was broke off, and all around the edges of the warped door. “The damper in the funnel!” Mother wheezed at me between coughing spells. “Turn it so the handle is straight with the pipe!”

  “It’s already turned straight with the pipe,” I told her.

  By that time my eyes felt as if the fire had caught in them instead of the furnace. We were both gasping for breath, but Mother dropped to her knees and tried to blow into the open doorway to the ash pit. “It’s just a matter of draft,” she told me between blows and gasps. “Bring a folded paper and fan hard!”

  I fanned until my arms ached, but all we got was smoke, and that gradually petered out.

  “Whewwww!” Mother whistled when the smoke had let up enough that she could talk again. “Well, we didn’t have very good luck, did we? There’s something wrong here that’s keeping us from getting the proper draft. I suspect it’s these open holes in the fire-box door. Do you think we could find something to close them with; something that wouldn’t burn off as soon as the fire is started? I’d hardly dare use adhesive tape.”

  I covered the holes with shutters that I cut out of sardine cans, but they didn’t help our next fire much, and the smoke poured out again in clouds. It billowed out of the ash pit doorway, and even seeped out of the cracks between some of the lengths of stove pipe. It was the seeping that saved us. Mother went all around the furnace with the lamp in her hand, looking for any handles that might be draft or dampers, and it was she who noticed that smoke was seeping out of only the first three joints in the pipe.

  “I’ve found it! I’ve found it!” she called out. There was a grating, squeaking sound, and then the smoke stopped pouring out. “Of all the silly things!” she said. “Now why do you suppose we didn’t notice that when we were putting those pieces of funnel together? Some careless person has put the handle of this damper on crossways, and we’ve been trying to start a fire with the funnel closed off tighter than a drum.”

  Old and rusty as our furnace was, it took hold in fine shape as soon as Mother had opened the draft. Within two or three minutes the kindling was roaring, and the coal caught as soon as I put it on, but the firebox was so big that twenty-five pounds didn’t more than half fill it.

  Mother took her bath while I was sweeping up the heaviest part of the ashes I’d spilled. Then, when I went upstairs to get my clean clothes, Grace had every door and window in the house open. She and Muriel were driving smoke out with their aprons, and Philip and Hal were swinging the doors back and forth for fans.

  I was awfully dirty, and it probably took me longer to take my bath than it should have, but by the time I’d finished and had my Sunday clothes back on, most of the smoke was out of the house and heat was coming up from the registers.

  We’d been going to have pot roast with whole vegetables for our dinner, but it was after nine o’clock before we were all back in our best clothes and down at the table, so it turned out to be a little more stew than roast. As Mother had always done since Father died, she sat looking around the table until everyone was seated and quiet, then she nodded toward me to say the grace. I don’t think I ever meant it quite so much as I did when I said it that first Sunday night in our new home.

  Even though the roast had turned pretty much to stew, it was awfully good eating, and I can’t remember many dinners when we were any happier. Mother laughed and joked about the trouble we’d had with the furnace. Then, after the dishes were finished and Elizabeth put to bed, she read to us for more than an hour.

  For some reason Mother didn’t read to us from the Bible that night, but from a new book that had been given her for Christmas. The name of the book was When Knighthood Was In Flower, and I liked it better than any book she’d read to us in a long, long time.

  Usually Mother stopped reading if any one of the children went to sleep, but that night she read on for more than half an hour after Hal had gone to sleep on my lap. When she reached the end of one chapter, she riffled the leaves ahead with a finger to see how many pages there were in the next one. “I really ought to stop right here,” she told us, “but we’ll never again have this first Sunday evening together in our new home, and I sort of hate to let go of it. Shall I go on and read another chapter?”

  11

  The Furnace Expert

  THE storm Mother had expected set in while she was reading to us. None of us noticed the howling of the wind until she had finished the chapter and closed the book. Then a window blind slammed shut, and when I went out to fasten it I was powdered from head to foot with snow that was finer than sugar.

  “Oh, my!” Mother said as she brushed me off. “With snow as fine as this, we’re in for a long, hard storm. We’d better go down and close the drafts and dampers on our furnace, so that we’ll have a gentle fire all through the night and a nice warm house in the morning.”

  When we got down to the cellar we found that our fire was far from gentle. A blast of heat rushed out as we opened the door, there was the smell of overheated metal, and a red glow shone from behind the furnace. “Good heavens!” Mother cried, “it’s a wonder we didn’t burn the house down over our heads! I should have thought to tell you about closing the ash pit door as soon as the fire had caught in good shape.”

  Mother hurried to the furnace, pushed the ash pit door closed with her foot, and stepped around to the back. “Gracious sakes alive!” she called out. “Just look at this funnel! Why, it’s as red as a berry!”

  I got there just in time to see her hand reaching for the handle of the damper. “Don’t touch it!” I yelled. “You’ll burn your fingers off!”

  “Don’t you ever shout at me!” Mother said quickly, then added, “But maybe it’s just as well you did this time. Suppose you find a stick or something to turn it with. That’s it! But don’t turn it too much. All the adhesive tape has burned off the holes, and I’m afraid coal gas might escape if we checked it too tightly. It’s deadly, you know, and could kill us all in our sleep. We’ll have to check our fire by opening the upper door and letting a cool draft draw in across the top.”

  “Well, if we’re going to get any cool draft I’ll have to open a window,” I told her. Then asked, “With all the adhesive tape burned off, how can we be sure that coal gas hasn’t already escaped?”

  “Smell it,” Mother said quickly. She stood for a minute or so, pinching her lips togethe
r and sniffing, then she said slowly, “I’m not sure, Son. With a cook stove one smells the gas if she closes the damper too quickly after adding coal, but I’m not sure about a furnace. It seems to me I have read that the fumes from a furnace have no odor, and that one may drowse off to sleep from the effect of them, never to wake again. Open a window, Son! Open them both! Quickly! I can’t be sure, and we will run no risks until we can learn more about it.”

  I couldn’t open the windows quickly. They were both nailed tight on the inside and there were storm sashes on the outside. I was just starting to pull the first nail when I heard the clanking of a furnace door and Mother almost shouted, “My stars above! Would you look at this!”

  I dropped the hammer and ran to peek over her shoulder, but all I could see was a dull glow at the bottom of the fire box, with a bright red circle of coals around the outside edge. “Why! Why!” Mother said. “We couldn’t have been reading for more than an hour, and here’s our whole bag of coal all burned to ashes. Why, this furnace could ruin us! Fifteen cents’ worth of coal in scarcely an hour! At that rate a single day’s supply would cost us . . .”

  “Three dollars and sixty cents,” I told her.

  “Oh, you must be wrong, Son!” she said. “It couldn’t be that much!”

  “Well, there are twenty-four hours in a day,” I told her, “and twenty times fifteen cents is three dollars, and four times fifteen is. . . .”

  “Yes. Yes, that’s right,” Mother said in a dull voice, “and for a month it would be . . . let me see . . .”

  “A hundred and eight dollars if it’s a thirty-day month,” I said, “because three times thirty-five is . . .”

  Mother cut me off by shutting the furnace door with a bang and saying, “Why! Why! Preposterous! Well, that’s the end of our trying to experiment by ourselves. You’ll have to be up bright and early in the morning. We must find someone who is really a furnace expert, then you’ll have to bring several bags of coal from the store, and go to Medford Square for new flue pipe. I hate to spend so much money right at this time, but with this storm blowing and the ladies coming tomorrow we can’t get along without heat.”

  “Then I guess I’ll have to stay out of school in the forenoon,” I told her. I didn’t give her any chance to say “No,” but hurried right on and asked, “Shall I open the windows now?”

  Mother didn’t answer me right away, but stood sniffing the hot air for a minute or so, then looked around to where the leaky flue pipe had cooled to a dull reddish-blue. “It seems a shame to waste all the heat in this cellar,” she said slowly. “Even without a fire it would seep up through the floors and keep the house comfortable during the night. No! No! I can’t risk it! I’ll set the lamp right here, so that you can see, and you get these windows open while I air the upstairs room thoroughly. I may be over-squeamish, but only fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

  If angels go barefooted, as the pictures in our Sunday School magazine always showed them, I’ll bet they’d have feared to tread around our house by the time I got the windows open and went upstairs. The younger children were all in bed, covered with overcoats and all the quilts and blankets we had. Every door and window was wide open, the house was already colder than the North Pole, and the wind was streaking through in a hurricane, but Grace and Mother were flapping aprons, trying to drive every bit of warm air out of the corners.

  It was half-past-five when Mother called me the next morning. Her teeth were chattering when she told me, “I’m afraid we may have overdone it a particle when we left the cellar windows open last night. This morning there is no water in the faucets, and I’m terribly afraid some ice may have formed in the pipes. If we let them freeze too hard they will burst, you know, and the expense of repairing them might be staggering.”

  “Do you want me to start another fire in the furnace?” I asked her.

  “Good heavens, no!” she said. “We can’t risk filling this house with gas again, and besides, we haven’t enough coal. I will need every particle we have for the kitchen stove. I have a wash boiler of water heating, and just as soon as it bubbles we must wrap all the pipes with hot cloths. In the meantime you will have to close and secure those cellar windows.”

  When I’d finished with the windows Mother and Grace were wringing out sheets that they’d dipped in the boiling water. As they went down the cellar stairs with them Mother called to me, “Get right in here and help us. Dip a couple of those bath towels and bring them right along quickly.”

  I nearly scalded my hands in trying to wring out the towels, and they were still so hot that I had to keep bouncing them all the way down the cellar, but before I could get them shaken out and wrapped around a pipe they’d be almost cold. Then, too, if I touched the cold pipe with a wet finger it would stick and burn like fire.

  After we’d made a dozen trips for more hot cloths Mother said, “There! If that won’t do it, we’ll just have to wait until we can find out how to get this furnace to burn properly. There’s no sense in soiling every inch of cloth we own on these sooty pipes, and I think we’ve warmed them up enough by now to keep them from bursting. Son, isn’t it about time for the store to open? You’d better run along and find out from Mr. Haushalter as much as you can about furnaces, then hurry right back with two bags of coal. I hate to think of keeping you out of school for a half-day, but it may be necessary. Do you think Mr. Haushalter would mind if you were to go to the Square for a new funnel the first thing, then made up the time you’d lost after we had our fire started?”

  Mr. Haushalter was late in opening the store that morning, and before he got there I thought my hands and feet would freeze off. “Why, bless my soul,” he shouted when he came around the corner and saw me, “there wa’n’t no need of you shinnin’ out of a warm bed so early this mornin’. Won’t be nobody a-stirrin’ out in a storm like this lest they’re after the doctor, and there won’t be no coal orders to deliver till John fetches ’em in.”

  While he was unlocking the door and starting the fire in the pot-bellied stove I told him about the trouble we’d had with the furnace, and about the ladies coming to talk with Mother, and about the rusted flue pipe and the coal gas. Then I asked him if he could tell me how I ought to set the drafts and dampers to get the right kind of fire without wasting coal. He didn’t answer until he’d tossed a cupful of kerosene into the stove and got the clean ceiling all smoked up again. Then he leaned his elbows back on the counter and told me, “Well, sir, an old furnace is about the same sort of a critter as a wife, and there ain’t no more profit in tryin’ to tell a man how to get along with one than with t’other. He has to live with ’em a spell and get used to their critchets and crotchets, and there ain’t no two of ’em has the same notions, nor keeps ’em for more’n two-three days hand-runnin’.”

  “Now you take an old furnace in a house with a big chimbley, one that used to have three-four fireplaces to it. Well, sir, apt as not, when the wind’s from the nor’east you got to set your drafts and dampers one particular way. Then come a so’wester, that settin’ would be wrong roads about; you got to set ’em different. But you tell your ma she don’t need to worry none about coal gas with a red-hot flue pipe and the wind a-blowin’ the way it’s been endurin’ this storm. Bless my soul, with the dampers wide open it’s a wonder the draft didn’t suck the whole blessed fire, ashes and all, right on up the chimbley.”

  When Mr. Haushalter was all through telling me about furnaces I didn’t know any more about running ours than I’d known before, but I thanked him and asked if it would be all right for me to go for the new flue pipe after I’d taken the coal home. He didn’t let me get through telling him I’d make up the time, but said, “Lord love you, boy, don’t you worry none about the store till you get your ma squared away to home. John and me’ll make out all right, and you’d best to get that furnace a-goin’ ’fore them pipes freezes any harder.”

  When I took the coal home and told mother what Mr. Haushalter had said about running a
furnace she shook her head and said, “Now doesn’t that sound just like a Yankee storekeeper. I suppose we might as well start finding out about these critchets and crotchets, even if we do have to waste a lot of coal, but I won’t risk it with that rusted-out old funnel. You take three dollars out of my purse and run up to the Square for a new one. Tell the man in the hardware store that you want twenty-one feet of eight-inch furnace pipe and two elbows. I know the length is right; Gracie measured it. And, oh yes, while you’re up there drop in at the coal yard and ask them to deliver us a ton of furnace coal right away. Tell the man we’ll pay for it when it is delivered.”

  Whenever Mother sent me anywhere she always told me to run, but I couldn’t have run to Medford Square that morning any more than I could have flown. I had to lean against the wind all the way, and in some places the snow was drifted more than knee-deep. I’d thought that with the wind behind me, the coming back would be easy enough, but it wasn’t. The bundle of flue pipe was bigger than I was, and the wind used it for a sail. I don’t think I’d ever have got home with it if I hadn’t met Al Richardson just as he was finishing his paper route.

  Al was the boy I had a fight with on my first day at school, but I liked him better than any of the other boys, and I guess he liked me. If he hadn’t he never would have helped me the way he did that day. The wind was howling so loud we couldn’t do much talking, but when we stopped to rest I told Al about the trouble we’d had with the furnace, and about the ladies coming to see Mother. We were just coming into our yard when the fire bells began ringing, and I shouted, “Whew! I pity the poor people who had their house catch fire on a day like this.”

  “That’s no fire,” Al shouted back. “Two-two sounded four rounds is No School. As soon as I go tell my mother where I’ll be I’ll come back and start your fire for you. I’m a furnace expert.”