The girl had denied the fact that she had left a candle burning in her room when she went to supper. Mary Pease had seen it, and both Miss Scrimp and Ruth Fielding knew that the fire started in that particular room.
Why the girl had left the candle burning was another mystery. Recklessly denying the main fact, of course Amy would not explain the secondary mystery. Nagged and heckled by some of the sophomores and juniors, Amy declared she wished the whole school had burned down and then she would not have had to stay at Briarwood another day!
Ruth and Helen one day rescued the girl from the midst of a mob of larger girls who were driving Amy Gregg almost mad by taunting her with being a "fire bug."
"What are you wild animals doing?" demanded Helen, who was much sharper with the evil doers among the under classes than was Ruth. "So she's a 'fire-bug?' Oh, girls! what better are you than poor little Gregg, I'd like to know? Every soul of you has done worse things than she has done—only your acts did not have such appalling results. Behave yourselves!"
Ruth could not have talked that way to the girls; but many of them slunk away under Helen's reprimand. Ruth took the crying Amy away—but neither she nor Helen was thanked.
"I wish you girls would mind your own business and let me alone," sobbed the foolish child, hysterically. "I can fight my own battles, I'll tear their hair out! I'll scratch their faces for them!"
"Oh, dear me, Amy!" sighed Ruth. "Do you think that would be any real satisfaction to you? Would it change things for the better, or in the least?"
What made the girls so unfeeling toward Amy was the fact that from the beginning she had expressed no sorrow over the destruction of the dormitory, and that she had refused to write home to ask for a contribution to the fund being raised for the new building.
When every other girl at Briarwood Hall was doing her best to get money to help Mrs. Tellingham, Amy Gregg's callousness regarding the fire and its results showed up, said Jennie, "just like a stubbed toe on a bare-footed boy!"
Really, Ruth began to think she would have to act as guard for Amy Gregg to and from the school. The girl was not allowed to play with the other girls of her age. Wherever she went a small riot started.