THE FIRE
The three girls reached the door in the same instant, but Mrs. Peyton followed, and still held Margaret's arm in a desperate clutch.
"Don't leave me!" she repeated. "Margaret, don't leave me to die!"
But Margaret put the clinging hands away. "You are not going to die," she said. "You are going to sit down in this chair, Mrs. Peyton, and be quiet till I come back. See, here is Elizabeth, with water and cologne, and everything comfortable. By and by you shall go up-stairs, but rest here now; nothing can happen to you, and I will come back as soon as I can."
Wondering at her own hardihood, Margaret ran out, shunning the wild pleading of the beautiful eyes which she knew were bent upon her. Jean was waiting for her on the step, but Peggy had disappeared.
"She said we were to go on," said Jean, "and she would catch us up. Which way, Margaret? I don't know the way."
Margaret led the way through the garden, running as she had never run before. They had not gone a hundred yards when Peggy was at their side. She had a coil of rope slung over her arm.
"It may be wanted," she said. "I remembered where it always hung. Oh, if the boys were only here!"
They ran on in silence, Margaret echoing the cry in her heart. At every step the glare grew brighter, the rolling smoke thicker. Margaret noticed, and wondered at herself for noticing, that the under side of some of the leaves above her head shone red like copper, while others were yellow as gold. Every patch of fern and brake, every leaf of box or holly, stood out, clear as at noonday.
On, down the long cedar alley, the dew dripping from the branches as they closed behind them; over the sunk fence, and across the lower garden to the summer-house, Hugh's summer-house. Once Margaret would have shuddered at the drop into the meadow below, but Grace's climbing lessons had not been given in vain, and, without a moment's hesitation, she followed Peggy down the old willow-tree, landing knee-deep in fern below.