She had seized the broken arm, and the pain roused the fainting girl.
"Yes'm," she said, starting up. "I'm so sorry to be good for nothing just now, when you want me so much, but I broke my arm jumping out."
Afterwards, when the family had found a new shelter, the whole story came out. The maid, Judith, had read herself to sleep, and her candle had tipped over and set the bed on fire. The flames had aroused her to a terror which utterly swept away whatever presence of mind she might have had under other circumstances, and without one thought for Rose or "Nanty" she had hurried off to call the neighbors to the scene of action.
One might have feared that the fright and exposure would prove fatal to one so frail and delicate as "Nanty" had always been; but by the time her arm was well healed she was stronger than ever before, drawing new life, as it seemed, from the love and care lavished on her so freely; for now even Mrs. Grant's heart had opened and taken her in.
One day Marcus Grant said to his wife,—
"But for 'Nanty' we should have had no child at all. It seems hard that she, who saved our darling, should be nobody's child herself."
"You think we ought to adopt her, and make her ours legally?" his wife answered, smiling cheerfully. "I have been thinking the same thing myself. We will do it when you please, for I believe God sent her to us, to be our own, just as much as ever He sent Rose."
So it came about, before another spring, that "Nanty" was no longer nobody's child. Father, mother, and little sister all belonged to her, and she had name and place in life, and a happy home where love smiled for ever.