Mrs. Hobart has also a gown of very elegant black silk, with deep, rich border-folds of velvet, and a black camel’s-hair shawl whose priceless margin comes up to within three inches of the middle; and in these she has turned meekly away from Mrs. Marchbanks’s vestibule, leaving her inconsequential card, many wondering times; never doubting, in her simplicity, that Mrs. Marchbanks was really making pies, or doing up pocket-handkerchiefs; only thinking how queer it was it always happened so with her.

In her fire-gown she was destined to go in.

Barbara came home dreadfully tired from her walk to Mrs. Dockery’s, and went to bed at eight o’clock.  When one of us does that, it always breaks up our evening early.  Mother discovered that she was sleepy by nine, and by half past we were all in our beds.  So we really had a fair half night of rest before the alarm came.

It was about one in the morning when Barbara woke, as people do who go to bed achingly tired, and sleep hungrily for a few eager hours.

“My gracious! what a moon!  What ails it?”

The room was full of red light.

Rosamond sat up beside her.

“Moon!  It’s fire!”

Then they called Ruth and mother.  Father and Stephen were up and out of doors in five minutes.

The Roger Marchbanks’s stables were blazing.  The wind was carrying great red cinders straight over on to the house roofs.  The buildings were a little down on our side of the hill, and a thick plantation of evergreens hid them from the town.  Everything was still as death but the crackling of the flames.  A fire in the country, in the dead of night, to those first awakened to the knowledge of it, is a stealthily fearful, horribly triumphant thing.  Not a voice nor a bell smiting the air, where all will soon be outcry and confusion; only the fierce, busy diligence of the blaze, having all its own awful will, and making steadfast headway against the sleeping skill of men.

We all put on some warm things, and went right over.

Father found Mr. Marchbanks, with his gardener, at the back of the house, playing upon the scorching frames of the conservatory building with the garden engine.  Up on the house-roof two other men-servants were hanging wet carpets from the eaves, and dashing down buckets of water here and there, from the reservoir inside.

Mr. Marchbanks gave father a small red trunk.  “Will you take this to your house and keep it safe?” he asked.  And father hastened away with it.

Within the house, women were rushing, half dressed, through the rooms, and down the passages and staircases.  We went up through the back piazza, and met Mrs. Hobart in her fire-gown at the unfastened door.  There was no card to leave this time, no servant to say that Mrs. Marchbanks was “particularly engaged.”

Besides her gown, Mrs. Hobart had her theory, all ready for a fire.  Just exactly what she should do, first and next, and straight through, in case of such a thing.  She had recited it over to herself and her family till it was so learned by heart that she believed no flurry of the moment would put it wholly out of their heads.