The three reverend sixteen-year-olds expressed their perfect willingness to play anything, and proposed Stage-Coach to begin with. Every one was eager to move about after sitting still so long and in a few moments the house was in a joyous uproar, as though having worked so hard made the girls more able to enjoy themselves.
Stage-Coach was followed by Winks and Going to Jerusalem—played with the help of the Victrola, and finally a calm ensued for twenty questions. Then came Charades, acted in Lucy's and Marian's rooms, with one room for the actors and one for the audience. These were so popular that they lasted until Lucy whispered to Marian, who happened to be on the audience side at the moment:
"Would you mind going down and telling Margaret and Rosie that we're ready now? It's nearly five o'clock."
Marian ran down-stairs to the dining-room and gave Rosie Lucy's message. Mrs. Gordon had put a pretty, embroidered cloth on the table and a big fern in the center. Everything was ready on it except for Margaret to bring things up from the kitchen, and for the candles to be lighted, for five o'clock meant nearly darkness now.
"Shall I light the candles?" asked Rosie, looking very trim and nice in her little white apron. "Did Miss Lucy say they'd be right down?"
"Yes, they are coming in just a minute," said Marian, drawing up another chair to the table, and counting to see if there were enough.
Suddenly a gust of wind from the harbor blew open the big glass door opening from the dining-room on the back piazza. Marian rushed toward it in a panic as the table-cloth billowed and fluttered and the pictures on the wall rocked back and forth. She seized the door and closed it, and as she struggled with the fastening she heard something fall behind her and heard Rosie scream. The lighted candle had tipped over on the table and Rosie, wildly snatching at the fallen candlestick and at the second one, ready to fall, had set fire to her fluttering apron.
The flame sprang quickly to life in the air still quivering from the gust of wind, and curled dangerously against her muslin dress as Rosie's trembling hands tried vainly to untie the strings. "Get some water!" she stammered, white with terror, and remembering only one of the counsels taught her—to stand still.
The water-pitcher was across the room from Marian, and one good drenching would have put out the flame, but Marian stood rooted to the spot with horror, literally unable to move, her staring eyes fixed on Rosie's apron, and on the girl's terrified, white face as she still tugged at the strings behind her waist. But Rosie found her voice now, and she burst into such screams that Margaret came running breathless from below, and the whole party, abandoning charades, rushed down-stairs with headlong speed. One look at Rosie and Margaret seized the pitcher of water and poured it over her blazing apron and already kindling skirt; then, laying the child on the floor, she rolled her tightly in a rug till the last spark was extinguished. By the time the girls and Mrs. Gordon were on the scene the danger was over, and except for being pale and trembling, Rosie was unharmed.
"What on earth happened? Is she hurt?" "Good gracious, did she catch fire?" "I heard those awful screams, and——" came in a babel of voices. Some one dressed as a gypsy, to judge by a quantity of shawls and curtains, shouted excitedly to a sort of Daniel Boone, in Major Gordon's boots and William's leather cap. The charaders had not waited to change their clothes. The room was crowded to the doors, for the sentry had run into the house, gun in hand, at Rosie's shrieks, to be re-enforced by two soldiers from the Quartermaster's who were doing carpentry in the basement.