“‘With your Ma, miss, I expect,’ Cook said; and as we came out she asked some one, who said, ’I saw Jane at the door of the_ Crown just now.’  I had been half asleep till then, but when we got into the street and saw the smoke coming out of the dining-room window, Rupert and I wanted to stay and try to save something, but one of the men who was there said, ’You and your brother’s not strong enough to be of no great use, miss; you’re only in the way of the engine.  Everybody’s doing their best to save your things, and if you’ll go to the Crown to your mamma, you’ll do the best that could be.’

“The people who were saving our things saved them all alike.  They threw them out of the window, and as I had seen the big blue china jar smashed to shivers, I felt a longing to go and show them what to do; but Rupert said, ‘The fellow’s quite right, Henny,’ and he seized me by the hand and dragged me off to the_ Crown. Jane was in the hall, looking quite wild, and she said to us, ‘Where’s Master Cecil?’ I didn’t stop to ask her how it was that she didn’t know.  I ran out again, and Rupert came after me.  I suppose we both looked up at the nursery window when we came near, and there was Baby Cecil standing and screaming for help.  Before we got to the door other people had seen him, and two or three men pushed into the house.  They came out gasping and puffing without Cecil, and I heard one man say, ’It’s too far gone.  It wouldn’t bear a child’s weight, and if you got up you’d never come down again.’

“‘God help the poor child!’ said the other man, who was the chemist, and had a large family, I know.  I looked round and saw by Rupert’s face that he had heard.  It was like a stone.  I don’t know how it was, but it seemed to come into my head:  ’If Baby Cecil is burnt it will kill Rupert too.’  And I began to think; and I thought of the back stairs.  There was a pocket-handkerchief in my jacket pocket, and I soaked it in the water on the ground.  The town burgesses wouldn’t buy a new hose when we got the new steam fire-engine, and when they used the old one it burst in five places, so that everything was swimming, for the water was laid on from the canal.  I think my idea must have been written on my face, for though I didn’t speak, Rupert seemed to guess at once, and he ran after me, crying, ‘Let me go, Henrietta!’ but I pretended not to hear.

“When we got to the back of the house the fire was not nearly so bad, and we got in.  But though it wasn’t exactly on fire where we were, the smoke came rolling down the passage from the front of the house, and by the time we got to the back stairs we could not see or breathe, in spite of wet cloths over our faces, and our eyes smarted with the smoke.  Go down on all fours, Henny,’ said Rupert.  So I did.  It was wonderful.  When I got down with my face close to the ground there was a bit of quite fresh air, and above this the smoke rolled like a cloud.  I could see the castors of the legs