More Bed-Time Stories

by Louise Chandler Moulton

And little Rose—for so they named the summer baby—clung to her young nurse with a fond tenacity, very exacting and wearing, indeed, but unutterably sweet to the shy girl whom no one else loved. She began to feel that she was of some use,—even she had her own name and place in the world; and this reminds me that I have not yet told you her name. She had been christened Annette soon after she came under the Grant roof, but little Rose called her "Nanty," and this odd title was the very first word that small person ever spoke. She was a lovely baby, one of the rosy, fat, dimpled, laughing kind, and so thoroughly healthy that she seldom cried, except when "Nanty" disappeared for a moment from her sight. The touch of her baby fingers seemed to make Marcus Grant and his wife both young again. Day by day some line of care faded out of their faces, which time had begun to harden. The mother smiled, as she had never smiled before, on her baby; and here, at last, was an object on which the father's great, loving heart could lavish itself, unblamed, and unquestioned.

Rose was a year and a half old, when one cold winter night her father and mother were persuaded to go to a house warming, a mile away. Mrs. Grant was seldom willing to leave her baby, but this gay company was to assemble at the new house of one of her best friends, and she took a fancy to be present.

"'Nanty' will be just as careful of Rose, to do her justice, as I should," she said; "and I think it's only neighborly to go."

Her husband, always sociable in his nature, assented readily enough; and eight o'clock saw them well tucked in under the buffalo robes of their sleigh, and started for the scene of festivities.

"Nanty," for her part, was well content. Rose was already asleep, her little cheek, pink as the heart of one of her namesake flowers, resting on one dimpled hand, while the other was tossed above her head, as we have all seen babies sleep. The maid-of-all-work went off early to her bed in the next chamber, and the man, who had a family of his own not far away, took his departure, and then "Nanty" raked up the fire, and crept softly into bed beside little Rose.

It was nearly midnight when she woke, roused from her slumber by a light, a vivid, red light, brighter than day. In one moment she realized her position. The house was on fire, and the flames were already far advanced.

She sprang to the door and opened it, but it was only to be met and driven back by a sheet of fire. There was no hope of escape that way. Rose was her only thought. If she could save the child, she did not care for herself.

She opened the chamber window. The leap seemed desperate to her timid gaze, but the snow underneath the window might break the fall. Then she thought of something better. She caught the blankets from the bed, and rolled Rose in them hurriedly, then dragged off the feather-bed, by an effort of uttermost strength, and forced it through the window; and then, reaching out as far as she could, she dropped Rose, closely wrapped in the blankets, upon the bed, and sprang herself from another window, lest she might fall upon the child.

For her there was no bed underneath, and no wrapping of soft woollens. Heavily she fell to the ground, and a violent shock, followed by deadly pain, told her that she had broken her arm. She thanked God, in that breathless moment, that it was not her leg, for somehow she must move Rose to a place of safety, out of reach, at least, of falling timbers. How she did it she never could have told, but in thirty seconds Rose and the bed were out of the yard and across the street, and then she sank down beside her charge, utterly unconscious.