“Exactly. It is refreshing to find you so docile.”
“I suspect it is because I am a coward physically. I have not much desire to stand in the front; in fact, I’d like to desert from the army of workers.”
“Margaret, I’m afraid you are going to be sick,” exclaimed Elsie, all the mischief dying out of her face.
“Nonsense, Rosebud. I never was sick in my life.”
“Everybody finds his Waterloo some time, and now, Margaret Murchison, I’m going to exert my long-reserved authority and insist that you put up that book—somehow I never see you of late without a book or a cabbage in your hand—and go to bed. You are completely tired out, I know, and there is no use in trying to make a martyr of yourself any longer.”
With gentle insistence Elsie took the book from her sister’s hand and dragged her off to bed, hovering over her with ostentatious airs of stern command that were as grateful to Margaret’s tired senses as they were amusing in the blithe-hearted girl.
Some moments later, though it was still early in the evening, the little household was wrapped in profound slumber.
Fire! Fire! shouted a belated passer-by as he ran hurriedly toward the Idlewild cottage.
Fire! Fire! first took up one voice and another, and Fire! Fire! they cried almost under the windows of the little house. No response came from the inside. “Pound on the doors!” shouted a voice.
“Maybe they are not at home,” responded another. “Pound away! wake them up! break in the door!”