They did, and before noon had completed arrangements, paid the twenty
dollars, signed an agreement to pay forty more, and were told they
could take the engine.




CHAPTER VI

THE FIRST RUN


"How are we going to get it home?" asked Cole, as he and Bert, with
the Jamesville fire chief, went out to look at the hand engine. It was
in a shed, back of the place where the new chemical machine was
housed.

"Can't you borrow a horse and drive it over?" asked the chief.

"No; let's get the fellows over here and pull it back to Lakeville,"
proposed Bert. "That'll be fun. We'll wake up our old town by parading
through it."

"That's the idea," agreed the chief. "Your citizens need stirring up,
anyhow. That was quite a fire you had over there the other night. If
you'd had a chemical engine like ours that blaze could have been put
out."

"That's what it could," replied Cole.