"You had best take the children to the Dower House. This is no fit place for them. This old house will burn like tinder. It will be as much as we can do, to save the pictures and the plate. I doubt if the firemen will come in time."
So Nurse dressed the children with trembling fingers. Jane was almost in hysterics, and little use at all. Then Nurse hurried them down the avenue. She carried Bertie, and Freda and Daffy and Edmund followed her close behind. Bertie was crying a little, Freda almost enjoying it, and Daffy and Edmund absolutely pale with fright and very silent.
Nurse stopped at the lodge.
"If you weren't so crowded, Mrs. Lane," she said to the lodge-woman, "I would get you to take us in; but you've four children of your own, I know."
Mrs. Lane was wringing her hands in fright and excitement.
"My John is up at the Hall now. Oh, mercy on us, what an awful sight the flames are! I said to 'im when I saw the glare, 'That's the nurseries, and the children will be burnt in their beds.' However did it happen?"
But Nurse pushed on without a word.
As they came near the Dower House Freda spoke in a whisper to Edmund:
"Isn't this fun? What will Fibo and Dreamikins say when they see us come in the middle of the night?"
Edmund looked at her with scared eyes, then he said, "It's all Nurse's fault."