The women were swarming about Mollie with their children, crying, gesticulating, talking. It was a clear, white night and Bobbin could see them easily. The men were engaged in rushing back and forth with pails of water, fearing that the water might freeze on the way.
But there was nowhere any sign of Polly!
Bobbin did not try to attract attention. In the instant it did not even occur to her that she might not have been able to make any one understand. Simply and without being seen she slipped into one of the big front windows, opened by the men as a passage-way, and started fighting her way again up the black, smoke-laden steps.
There seemed to be no more air, it was all a thick, foggy substance that got into your throat and made you unable to breathe and into your eyes so that you could not see. But Bobbin went resolutely on.
She clung to the banisters and dragged herself upward, either too stupid or too intent on her errand to suffer fear. Nevertheless, through the smoke she could see that long tongues of flame were bursting out of the doors of the back parlor into the hall beneath her.
Only, once more at Polly's bedroom door Bobbin lost heart and the only real terror she ever remembered enduring seized hold on her. For Polly's door was still locked and she had no means of making her hear.
All that she could accomplish by hammering and kicking she had done before. Of course, she tried this again, yet the door did not open and so far as Bobbin could know there was no movement from the inside.
Yet next Miss O'Neill's room there was her own room and the door of this was unfastened. With a kind of half-blind impulse Bobbin staggered into it. She had no clear or definite idea of what she intended doing, yet fortunately this room was only partially filled with smoke so that she could in a measure see her way about.
There in the corner stood an old-fashioned, heavy wooden chair. Almost instinctively Bobbin seized hold on it. She was curiously strong, doubly so to any other girl of her age, since she had lived outdoors always like a little barbarian. Besides, there was nothing else that could be done. She must break down Miss O'Neill's door.
With all her force the girl hurled the heavy chair against the oak door. There were a few marks on its surface, yet the door remained absolutely firm, for the Webster house had been built in the days when wood had been plentiful in the New Hampshire hills and homes had been expected to endure.