“Clothes are the first thing,” said she.  “And this way, you are pretty sure to pick up everything.”  Everything was picked up, from Mrs. Marchbanks’s jewel-case and her silk dresses, to Mr. Marchbanks’s shaving brushes, and the children’s socks that they had had pulled off last night.

Elijah carried them all off, and piled them up in Mrs. Hobart’s great clean laundry-room to await orders.  The men hailed him as he went and came, to do this, or fetch that.  “I’m doing one thing,” he answered.  “You keep to yourn.”

“They’re comin’,” he said, as he returned after his third trip.  “The bells are ringin’, an’ they’re a swarmin’ up the hill,—­two ingines, an’ a ruck o’ boys an’ men.  Melindy, she’s keepin’ the laundry door locked, an’ a lettin’ on me in.”

Mrs. Marchbanks came hurrying back before the crowd.  Some common, ecstatic little boys, rushing foremost to the fire, hustled her on her own lawn.  She could hardly believe even yet in this inevitable irruption of the Great Uninvited.

Mrs. Lewis Marchbanks and Maud met her and came in with her.  Mr. Marchbanks and Arthur had hastened round to the rear, where the other gentlemen were still hard at work.

“Now,” said Mrs. Hobart, as lightly and cheerily as if it had been the putting together of a Christmas pudding, and she were ready for the citron or the raisins,—­“now—­all that beautiful china!”

She had been here at one great, general party, and remembered the china, although her party-call, like all her others, had been a failure.  Mrs. Marchbanks received a good many people in a grand, occasional, wholesale civility, to whom she would not sacrifice any fraction of her private hours.

Mrs. Hobart found her way by instinct to the china-closet,—­the china-room, more properly speaking.  Mrs. Marchbanks rather followed than led.

The shelves, laden with costly pottery, reached from floor to ceiling.  The polish and the colors flashed already in the fierce light of the closely neighboring flames.  Great drifts and clouds of smoke against the windows were urging in and stifling the air.  The first rush of water from the engines beat against the walls.

“We must work awful quick now,” said Mrs. Hobart.  “But keep cool.  We ain’t afire yet.”

She gave Mrs. Marchbanks her own keys, which she had brought down stairs.  That lady opened her safe and took out her silver, which Arthur Marchbanks and James Hobart received from her and carried away.

Mrs. Hobart herself went up the step-ladder that stood there before the shelves, and began to hand down piles of plates, and heavy single pieces.  “Keep folks out, Elijah,” she ordered to her man.