Even as Dolly shouted, Dick and Jack saw the flames, and Dick cried out, “I’ll go for Michael; you go upstairs, Jack, and screech for Aunt Rachel as you go.”
So the two Dana ladies were startled from their quiet reading, by seeing Jack Fuller dash madly in at the front door, and whipping off his cap by instinct, almost pause, as he said politely, but hastily, “Please, Miss Rachel,—good-afternoon. Your house is on fire! Excuse me!” and he ran breathlessly by the library door and up the stairs.
He couldn’t do a thing when he reached the playroom, for the flames were beyond the efforts of a ten-year-old boy.
But Dolly, who had found her wits, cried, “Pull down the curtains,” and she and Jack bravely pulled down a pair of light muslin curtains that had already begun to burn. They stamped on these, and so extinguished their flames, and Pinkie, in her excitement, pulled down another pair and stamped on them, although they had not caught fire at all, and, indeed, were in no danger of it.
But by that time, Michael and Pat had arrived. Passing the trembling aunties on the lower landing, they tore upstairs, and Dick followed closely at their heels.
Michael took in the situation at one glance.
“Take holt av the table,” he said to Pat, and the two strong men hustled the big table off the rug. Then they flung aside the chairs and other furniture that held the rug down, and, picking up the big carpet, flung it over the burning playhouse. The house toppled over with a crash, and the men trampled on the whole pile.
They smashed everything belonging to Dana Cottage, but it was the only way to conquer the flames, and Michael did not hesitate.
“Keep it up!” he said to Pat, and as Pat obediently stamped his big feet about, Michael turned to other parts of the room.
He stepped on a few smouldering papers, he pinched out a tiny flame in a curtain ruffle, and he threw a small rug over an already blazing waste-basket.