Not Quite Eighteen Part 9

"Oh, no!" contentedly. "I don't suppose it could come so far as this."

"But why not?" thought Elsie to herself, as she drove rapidly back. "If the wind were right for it, why shouldn't it come this way? Fires travel much farther than that on the prairies,--and they go very fast, too. I never did like having Nursey all alone by herself on that farm."

She reached home, to find things in unexpected confusion. Her father had been called away for the night by a telegram, and her mother--on this, of all days--had gone to bed, disabled with a bad headache. There was much to be done, and Elsie flung herself into the breach, and did it, too busy to think again of Nurse Sparrow and the fire, until, toward nightfall, she noted that the wind had changed, and was blowing straight from Bald Top, bringing with it an increase of smoke.

She ran out to consult the hired man before he went home for the night, and to ask if he thought there was any danger of the fire reaching the Long Woods. He "guessed" not.

"These fires get going quite often on to the other side of Bald Top, but there ain't none of 'em come over this way, and 'tain't likely they ever will. I guess Mis' Sparrow's safe enough. You needn't worry, Miss Elsie."

In spite of this comforting a.s.surance, Elsie did worry. She looked out of her west window the last thing before going to bed; and when, at two in the morning, she woke with a sudden start, her first impulse was to run to the window again. Then she gave an exclamation, and her heart stood still with fear; for the southern slopes of Bald Top were ringed with flames which gleamed dim and lurid through the smoke, and showers of sparks, thrown high in air, showed that the edges of the woods beyond Nursey's farm were already burning.

"She'll be frightened to death," thought Elsie. "Oh, poor dear, and no one to help her!"

What should she do? To go after the man and waken him meant a long delay. He was a heavy sleeper, and his house was a quarter of a mile distant. But there was Jack in the stable, and the stable key was in the hall below. As she dressed, she decided.

"How glad I am that I can do this!" she thought, as she flung the harness over the pony's back, strapped, buckled, adjusted,--doing all with a speed which yet left nothing undone and slighted nothing. Not even on the day when she took the prize had she put her horse in so quickly. She ran back at the last moment for two warm rugs. Deftly guiding Jack over the gra.s.s, that his hoofs should make no noise, she gained the road, and, quickening him to his fastest pace, drove fearlessly into the dark woods.

They were not so dark as she had feared they would be, for the light of a late, low-hung moon penetrated the trees, with perhaps some reflections from the far-away fire, so that she easily made out the turns and windings of the track. The light grew stronger as she advanced. The main fire was still far distant, but before she reached Nurse's little clearing, she even drove by one place where the woods were ablaze.

She had expected to find Mrs. Sparrow in an agitation of terror; but, behold! she was in her bed, sound asleep. Happily, it was easy to get at her. Nursey's theory was that, "if anybody thought it would pay him to sit up at night and rob an old woman, he'd do it anyway, and needn't have the trouble of getting in at the window;" and on the strength of this philosophical utterance, she went to bed with the door on the latch.

She took Elsie for a dream, at first.

"I'm just a-dreaming. I ain't a-going to wake up; you needn't think it,"

she muttered sleepily.

But when Elsie at last shook her into consciousness, and pointed at the fiery glow on the horizon, her terror matched her previous unconcern.

"Oh, dear, dear!" she wailed, as with trembling, suddenly stiff fingers she put on her clothes. "I'm a-going to be burned out! It's hard, at my time of life, just when I had got things tidy and comfortable. I was a-thinking of sending over for my niece to the Isle of Dogs, and getting her to come and stay with me, I was indeed, Missy. But there won't be any use in that _now_."

"Perhaps the fire won't come so far as this, after all," said the practical Elsie.

"Oh, yes, it will! It's 'most here now."

"Well, whether it does or not, I'm going to carry you home with me, where you will be safe. Now, Nursey, tell me which of your things you care most for, that we can take with us,--small things, I mean. Of course we can't carry tables and beds in my little cart."

The selection proved difficult. Nurse's affections clung to a tall eight-day clock, and were hard to be detached. She also felt strongly that it was a clear flying in the face of Providence not to save "Sparrow's chair," a solid structure of cherry, with rockers weighing many pounds, and quite as wide as the wagon. Elsie coaxed and remonstrated, and at last got Nursey into the seat, with the cat and a bundle of her best clothes in her lap, her tea-spoons in her pocket, a basket of specially beloved baking-tins under the seat, and a favorite feather-bed at the back, among whose billowy folds were tucked away an a.s.sortment of treasures, ending with the Thanksgiving goodies which had been brought over that morning.

"I can't leave that turkey behind, Missy, dear--I really can't!" pleaded Nursey. "I've been thinking of him, and antic.i.p.ating how good he was going to be, all day; and I haven't had but one taste of your pie.

They're so little, they'll go in anywhere."

The fire seemed startlingly near now, and the western sky was all aflame, while over against it, in the east, burned the first yellow beams of dawn. People were astir by this time, and men on foot and horseback were hurrying toward the burning woods. They stared curiously at the oddly laden cart.

"Why, you didn't ever come over for me all alone!" cried Nurse Sparrow, rousing suddenly to a sense of the situation. "I've be'n that fl.u.s.tered that I never took thought of how you got across, or anything about it.

Where was your Pa, Missy,--and Hiram?"

Elsie explained.

"Oh, you blessed child; and if you hadn't come, I'd have been burned in my bed, as like as not!" cried the old woman, quite overpowered. "Well, well! little did I think, when you was a baby, and I a-tending you, that the day was to come when you were to run yourself into danger for the sake of saving my poor old life!"

"I don't see that there has been any particular danger for me to run, so far; and as for saving your life, Nursey, it would very likely have saved itself if I hadn't come near you. See, the wind has changed; it is blowing from the north now. Perhaps the fire won't reach your house, after all. But, anyway, I am glad you are here and not there. We cannot be too careful of such a dear old Nursey as you are. And one thing, I think, you'll confess,"--Elsie's tone was a little mischievous,--"and that is, that harnessing cla.s.ses have their uses. If I hadn't known how to put Jack in the cart, I might at this moment be hammering on the door of that stupid Hiram (who, you know, sleeps like a log) trying to wake him, and you on the clearing alone, scared to death. Now, Nursey, own up: Mrs. Thanet wasn't so far wrong, now was she?"

"Indeed, no, Missy. It'd be very ungrateful for me to be saying that.

The lady judged wiser than I did."

"Very well, then," cried Elsie, joyously. "If only your house isn't burned up, I shall be glad the fire happened; for it's such a triumph for Mrs. Thanet, and she'll be so pleased!"

Nursey's house did not burn down. The change of wind came just in time to save it; and, after eating her own Thanksgiving turkey in her old home, and being petted and made much of for a few days, she went back, none the worse for her adventure, to find her goods and chattels in their usual places, and all safe.

And Mrs. Thanet _was_ pleased. She sent Elsie a pretty locket, with the date of the fire engraved upon it, and wrote that she gloried in her as the Vindicator of a Principle, which fine words made Elsie laugh; but she enjoyed being praised all the same.

DOLLY PHONE.

A dusty workshop, dark except where one broad ray of light streamed through a broken shutter, a row of mysterious objects, with a tiny tin funnel fitted into the front of each, and a cloth over their tops, odd designs in wood and bra.s.s hanging on the wall, a carpenter's bench, a small furnace, a general strew of shavings, iron sc.r.a.pe, and odds and ends, and a little girl sitting on the floor, crying. It does not sound much like the beginning of a story, does it? And no one would have been more surprised than Amy Carpenter herself if any one had come as she sat there crying, and told her that a story was begun, and she was in it.

Yet that is the way in which stories in real life often do begin. Dust, dulness, every-day things about one, tears, temper; and out of these unpromising materials Fate weaves a "happening" for us. She does not wait till skies are blue and suns s.h.i.+ne, till the room is dusted, and we are all ready, but chooses such time as pleases her, and surprises us.

Amy was in as evil a temper as little girls of ten are often visited with. Things had gone very wrong with her that day. It began with a great disappointment. All Miss Gray's cla.s.s at school was going on a picnic. Amy had expected to go too, and at the last moment her mother had kept her at home.

"I'm real sorry about it," Mrs. Carpenter had said, "but you see how it is. Baby's right fretty with his teeth, and your father's that worried about his machine that I'm afraid he'll be down sick. If we can't keep Baby quiet, father can't eat, and if he don't eat he won't sleep, and if he can't sleep he can't work, and then I don't see what will become of us. I've all that sewing to finish for Mrs. Judge Peters, and she's going away Monday; and if she don't have it in time, she'll be put out, and, as like as not, give her work to some one else. Now, don't cry, Amy. I'm right sorry to disappoint you, but all of us must take our turn in giving up things. I'm sure I take mine," with a little patient sigh.

"Father's sure that this new machine of his is going to make our fortune," she went on, after an interval of busy st.i.tching. "But I don't know. He said just the same about the alarm-clock, and the Imferno Reaper and Binder, and that thing-a-my-jig for opening cans, and the self-registering Savings Bank, and the Minute Egg-Beater, and the Tuck Measurer, and none of them came to anything in the end. Perhaps it'll be the same with this." Another sigh, a little deeper than the last.

Some little girls might have been touched with the tired, discouraged voice and look, but Amy was a stormy child, with a hot temper and a very strong will. So instead of being sorry and helpful, she went on crying and complaining, till her mother spoke sharply, and then subsided into sulky silence. Baby woke, and she had to take him up, but she did it unwillingly, and her unhappy mood seemed to communicate itself to him, as moods will. He wriggled and twisted in her arms, and presently began to whimper. Amy hushed and patted. She set him on his feet, she turned him over on his face, nothing pleased him. The whimper increased to a roar.

"Dear! dear!" cried poor Mrs. Carpenter, stopping her machine in the middle of a long seam. "What is the matter? I never did see anybody so unhandy with a baby as you are. Here I am in such a hurry, and you don't try to amuse him worth a cent. I'm really ashamed of you, Amy Carpenter."

Amy's back and arms ached; she felt that this speech was cruelly unjust.

What she did not see was that it was her own temper which was repeated in her little brother. Like all babies, he knew instinctively the difference between loving tendance and that which is bestowed from a cold sense of duty, and he resented the latter with all his might.

"Do walk up and down and sing to him," said Mrs. Carpenter, who hated to have her child unhappy, but still more to leave her sewing,--"sing something cheerful. Perhaps he'll go to sleep if you do."

So Amy, feeling very cross and injured, had to walk the heavy baby up and down, and sing "Rock me to sleep, Mother," which was the only "cheerful" song she could think of. It quieted the baby for a while, then, just as his eyelids were drooping, a fresh attack of fretting seized upon him, and he began to cry; Amy was so vexed that she gave him a furtive slap. It was a very little slap, but her mother saw it.

"You naughty, bad girl!" she cried, jumping up; "so that's the way you treat your little brother, is it? Slapping him on the sly! No wonder he doesn't like you, and won't go to sleep!" She s.n.a.t.c.hed the child away, and gave Amy a smart box on the ear. Mrs. Carpenter, though a good woman, had a quick temper of her own.

"You can go up-stairs now," she said in a stern, exasperated tone. "I don't want you any more this afternoon. If you were a good girl, you might have been a real comfort to me this hard day, but as it is, I'd rather have your room than your company."

Frightened and angry both, Amy rushed up-stairs, and into her father's workshop, the door of which stood open. He had just gone out, and the confusion and dreariness of the place seemed inviting to her at the moment. Flinging the door to with a great bang, she threw herself on the floor, and gave vent to her pent-up emotions.

"It's unjust!" she sobbed, speaking louder than usual, as people do who are in a pa.s.sion. "Mamma is as mean as she can be! Scolding me because that old baby wouldn't go to sleep! I hate everybody! I wish I was dead!

I wish everybody else was dead!"

These were dreadful words for a little girl to use. Even in her anger, Amy would have been startled and ashamed at the idea of any one's ever hearing them.