Bruce went back to the room at the rear of the now deserted building and seated himself in one of the arm-chairs. His face was flushed, and he was trembling with excitement. If he had ever longed for a fireman’s uniform he longed for it now, with an intensity such as he had never felt before, and he determined that no power on earth should prevent him entering the service and sustaining the reputation for courage and fidelity which his father had enjoyed for so many years.
That night Bruce Decker slept at the home of John Trask, and, while he was dreaming of fires and fire brigades and swift-moving horses, the chief and two or three of his men were gathered about a little round table at the rear of the truck house, discussing various schemes for giving the lad a start in the city.
“I don’t know,” said Charles Weyman, “but what the best thing we can do for the lad is to get him a job in some big store or place of business where he can begin at the beginning and work his way up. There’s nothing like business nowadays. Those big merchants make more money than any of the professional men do, when once they get a few thousand ahead, and anyway it’s a great deal better than this fire department business, which is all risk and danger and excitement, with very little money to compensate for it. You know that he is entitled to a pension of $300 a year from the department, and that amount, together with what he could make as an office boy or young clerk, ought to keep him going. I know if I’d gone into business when I was his age I would have made a good deal more money than I have by running to fires.”
“And yet you wouldn’t change now if you had the chance would you?” said one of the men carelessly.
“No, I don’t think I would—” began Weyman slowly, but Tom Brophy interrupted him with:
“What you say is all perfectly true, Charley, but you must remember one thing, and that is, that this lad is crazy over the Fire Department and anxious to get into it because his father was in it. Can’t you see how much he’s been thinking about it all his life? Did you notice how he recognized those horses and called them by name, just because his father had told him about them? Its very plain to me that all he’s heard about the New York Fire Department has made a deep impression on him, and when a boy’s got his head set on any particular line of business, it’s very foolish to try and force him in any other direction. Let him have a try first at what inclination leads him to, and then if he finds out that it’s not all a path of roses, it will be time enough for him to make a change and get into something else.”
