What he would have done in return, I don’t know, but at this moment the crowd broke up, and we were pushed, and pressed, and jostled about, and people kept calling to “Make way!” and after tumbling down, and being picked up twice, I found myself in the front row of a kind of lane that had been made through the crowd, down which several men were coming, carrying on their shoulders an arm-chair with people in it.

As they passed me there was a crash, which seemed to shake the street.  The roof of our house had fallen in!

As it fell the flames burst upon every side, and in the sudden glare the street became as bright as day, and every little thing about one seemed to spring into sight.  Half the crowd was known to me in a moment.

Then I looked at the chair which was being carried along; and by a large chip on one of the legs I knew it was my father’s old arm-chair.

And in the chair I saw Rupert in his shirt and trousers, and Henrietta in a petticoat and an out-door jacket, with so white a face that even the firelight seemed to give it no colour, and on her lap was Baby Cecil in his night-gown, with black smut marks on his nose and chin.

CHAPTER XV.

HENRIETTA’S DIARY—­A GREAT EMERGENCY.

Rupert never was a fellow who could give descriptions of things, and Henrietta was ill for some time after the fire, and Mr. Bustard said she wasn’t to talk about it.

But she knew I wanted to know, so one day when she was down-stairs with me in the “Miniature Room” (it was at the Castle) she gave me a manuscript book, and said, “It’s my diary, Charlie, so I know you won’t look.  But I’ve put in two marks for the beginning and end of the bit about the fire.  I wrote it that evening, you know, before Mr. Bustard came, and my head got so bad.”

Of course I made her show me exactly where to begin and leave off, and then I read it.  This was it.

"It had been a very hot day, and I had got rather a headache and gone to bed.  The pain kept me awake a good bit, and when I did get to sleep I think I slept rather lightly.  I was partly awakened by noises which seemed to have been going in my head all night till I could bear them no longer, so I woke up, and found that people were shouting outside, and that there was a dreadful smell of burning.  I had got on my flannel petticoat when Rupert called me and said, ’Henny dear, the house is on fire!  Just put something round you, and come quickly.’

“Just outside the door we met Cook; she said, ’The Lord be thanked! it’s you, Miss Henrietta.  Come along!’

“Rupert said, ‘Where’s Mother, Cook?’

“‘Missus was took with dreadful fainting fits,’ she replied, ’and they’ve got her over to the_ Crown. We’re all to go there, and everything that can be saved.’

“‘Where’s Baby,’ said I, ‘and Jane?’