“Take the glass, you will see farther; it stands on the shelf in my bedroom. Only, make haste, make haste!” panted Grace.
Bertha flew to obey. She was growing alarmed herself, for certainly this was like no cloud that she had ever seen before, and already the whole horizon was streaked with filmy haze.
Slipping the field glass into her apron pocket, so that she might have both hands free for climbing the ladder, she swarmed upwards as fast as she could go. Reaching the ridge, she steadied herself with one hand, and, pulling the glass from her pocket with the other, she tried to see what it was which made that dreadful murky haze away to the west, where the stretch of corn reached to the horizon.
Her hand was shaking so badly that the glass wobbled up and down, and she could get no focus at all. But alas! alas! she did not need the evidence of her eyes to tell her what it was, for the west wind was bringing on its breath the smell of smoke. Grace was right; it was the wheat that was on fire, and the wind was blowing it straight on to their section. Tom was away. He had gone over to Pottle’s Bent with two horses to bring home a reaper, in readiness to start cutting on the next day but one. But if the fire had its way there would be no cutting to do, and the golden plenty which waited for harvesting would be nothing but a blackened ruin.
“What can I do?” she wailed, as she slid down the ladder, and then with unerring instinct ran indoors to ask Grace what was the wisest thing to do.
“If the reaper were here, you might ride up and down a swath until you had cut enough to stop the fire. But the reaper isn’t here, and so that is out of the question, and there is nothing to be done but to beat it out,” said Grace, her nimble mind taking in the best way to meet the danger and overcome it.
“I’ll go and hitch Pucker to the wagon and put a barrel into it; I shall have to fill it with water afterwards, and it will take time, but I will be as fast as I can,” panted Bertha, and then she rushed away in a great hurry, bidding Grace remember all that she would want to take with her.
The wagon stood outside the barn, and it did not take many minutes to roll an empty barrel towards it, and then by sheer strength of arm get it up into the wagon, where she wedged it tight to keep it from spilling the water. Pucker came up to see what was going forward, and she caught him promptly, hitching him to the wagon with a dexterity born of much practice, then, driving up to the house, she proceeded to fill her barrel rather more than half full of water. Luckily she had that morning drawn up from the well the water she would want the next day for the family wash, and this saved her much time.
“Throw half a dozen sacks into the wagon, some pieces of string, and two or three brooms—you will be able to fight the fire quicker with a bag on a broom,” said Grace, then she bade her prop the doors open and go.
“Say Godspeed to me, dear; I am so horribly afraid!” panted Bertha, halting for a moment by the couch, her face white and drawn, and all the old cowardice of her nature rising up to mock her, now that she so badly needed to be brave and strong.