“Let me see the rest of it, Harry!” cried Laura, imperiously, trying to take the paper from her brother’s hand.
“No, you don’t!” cried the boy, resolutely, as he held the Herald out of her reach, “not until you find that ball of mine you said you lost yesterday.”
“Harry!” called a stern voice near them, and the boy turned sharply round to find his tutor, Mr. Reed, advancing rapidly toward him. “Go back to your room at once, Harry!” said Mr. Reed, sternly; and before the boy could reply his sister tore the paper from his grasp and ran off with it at the top of her speed.
“Come back with that!” cried her brother, as he started in pursuit, but the angry voice of his tutor recalled him before he had gone twenty paces, and he marched into the house very red in the face, and casting angry glances behind him at the two girls, who were now sitting in the summer-house, eagerly reading the long account of the fire at which Bruce had so nearly lost his life. When they had finished it Laura drew a long breath, and then burst into tears.
“Don’t cry, dear,” said Kitty, as she wiped a tear or two from her own face, “I’m sure he’s not badly hurt and will be all right again in a very few days.”
“It would be dreadful if he were to die without ever finding out the mystery of his birth,” wailed Laura. “Oh, dear, if I only knew where to find him I would write him a letter or go down to see him.”
“The paper says he’s at the New York hospital,” said Kitty. “Why don’t you go down there this very day? I think it would be just too romantic and interesting for words.”
Laura sprang to her feet and wiped the tears from her eyes with a swift movement of her hand. “I’ll do it,” she said. “I’ll find out where the New York hospital is and how to get there, and I’ll start this very minute. Harry thought he was so smart because he read it in the paper first, and was going down there himself all so bold and gay, but he’ll find out when he does get there that I’ve been there before him.”
Kitty’s face flushed with excitement. She thought it the most romantic thing in the world that Laura should run the risk of displeasing her father by making a long journey all by herself to an unknown part of the town simply to sit by the bedside of a daring young fireman who had been injured while going into a burning building to save a human life. The paper said that he was lying in a “precarious condition,” but neither one of the two girls knew what that long word signified, and they did not dare to ask anyone.
“Come up to my room with me, I’m going to get ready now,” said Laura, as she led the way into the house.