"Then I will, just to show you I dare. I'm not afraid of Miss Rowe!" declared Enid, appropriating the box and putting it in her pocket.
The girls laughed, not believing for a moment that she really intended to carry out her threat. The bell rang, Miss Rowe entered, and lessons began before they had time to say anything more about it. Euclid was not a favourite subject with the Upper Fourth. It was considered dry, and the half-hour devoted to it was regarded as more or less of a penance. In the very middle of the fifth proposition, when Miss Rowe had changed the letters on the blackboard, and was endeavouring to make Vera Clifford grasp the principle of the reasoning, instead of merely repeating the problem by rote, Enid's head was bent low over her desk, and her fingers appeared to be busy with something.
"Y G K = D F O," droned Vera in a melancholy voice.
Suddenly there was a striking sound, and a loud, long hiss.
"Oh! oh! oh!" came in a subdued chorus from all sides.
"Enid, what are you doing?" cried Miss Rowe, sharply.
For answer naughty Enid held up the hissing fusee in a kind of daring triumph, but as she raised her head her long curly hair, which was floating loose, brushed against the burning spark, and in an instant blazed up, setting fire also to the sleeve of her thin lawn blouse. With a wild shriek she dropped the fusee, and, springing from her seat, would have tried in her terror to rush from the room had she not been prevented by Miss Rowe, who, with admirable presence of mind, seized the duster from the blackboard, and with only that and her bare hands succeeded in stifling the flames. The whole class was in a panic. Jean Bannerman ran at once for Miss Hall, the teacher in the next room, and in a very short space of time Miss Lincoln herself arrived on the scene. Finding that Enid and Miss Rowe were the only two hurt, she carried them off at once to apply first aid until a doctor could be summoned, leaving Miss Hall to try and calm the agitated girls. Cissie Gardiner was sobbing hysterically, and all were offering versions of the accident in such a state of excitement, that it was difficult to understand their accounts.
"Enid Walker lighted a fusee?" repeated Miss Hall, almost incredulously. "Then she alone is responsible for this unhappy occurrence. I can only trust that neither she nor Miss Rowe is seriously injured. Girls, go back to your desks. I must return now to my own class, but I will send a prefect to you as soon as possible. I trust to your good feeling to work in silence at your preparation for to-morrow."
Miss Rowe and Enid were taken to the sanatorium, which was always kept in readiness to receive urgent cases. Both were suffering greatly from the shock: Miss Rowe's hands were badly scorched, and Enid had a severe burn on her arm and also on her neck. The doctor, having completed his dressings, ordered them both to be kept very quiet, and not to receive visitors until he gave his permission. It was several days, therefore, before Enid was allowed to see any of her school-fellows, and when the nurse at last declared that she might have a friend to spend half an hour with her, she fixed her choice at once upon Patty. The latter had been two or three times a day to the sanatorium to enquire how the invalids were progressing, so it was with great eagerness that she now knocked at the door. She was admitted by the nurse, and after a warning not to excite her companion, was shown to Enid's room. Enid was lying on the sofa, her arm swathed in bandages; some of her pretty hair had been cut away, and her face looked white, with dark circles round her eyes, as if she had not slept. Patty, after a rapturous greeting, sat down on a chair by her side, and began to tell her the school news.
"Everybody sent all kinds of messages," she said. "It seems so funny in class without either you or Miss Rowe. Have you seen Miss Rowe? Are her hands very bad?"