Mrs. Garden laughed. “I fancy it wouldn’t alter anything, dear Mrs. Moulton,” she said. “Jane will find her own level. Do look at her, kneeling by the fountain! Would you not be sure it was a deep, dark pool, and that she was going to her mad death? Ophelia ends there; they must all guess it. But what a child!”
“They” did “all guess it.” There was the silence that is the truest applause for an instant, then the garden rang with shouts of: “Ophelia! Ophelia!” to the accompaniment of clapping hands.
Mary had urged that Joel Bell be bidden to bring his children to see the festival which he had, indirectly, suggested. The three little Bells were small, in varying degrees of smallness, down to the baby, who, Joel had said: “Was ’most two.” They ranged from her up past another girl of four, to the boy, who was six. Tucked away in a safe vantage corner for seeing, unseen, the three small Bells had bewilderedly watched many things and people which they could by no means understand, had enjoyed the music, but had finally settled down to adoration of the lanterns swaying in the breeze, as the crown and glory, the wonder and beauty, beyond all the other beautiful wonders which enveloped their awe-struck minds. The baby was too young for her awe to strike lastingly deep. Several times she escaped her sister’s and brother’s competent vigilance and sallied forth from their post, only to be caught and brought back, her protests muffled, not soothed, by firm little hands clapped over her wide-open mouth.
Just at the end of the entertainment, when those appointed to the task were getting ready to collect lists from the guessers, count up correct entries after the numbers, and award the prizes for the three best lists, Nina Bell, the baby, still wide awake when the two older little Bells were getting muffled by sleepiness, saw her chance and escaped once more, this time successfully. She toddled along, her covetous eyes on the swinging lanterns quite beyond the reach of her hands, but not of her ambition.
“Everything comes to him who waits” is more or less true. Small Nina had been waiting all the evening to see one of those luminous bright things close by. As she went wistfully along the path now, a cord from which a line of the lanterns was suspended dropped from the farther branch to which it had been attached and fell at her feet.
Here they were, not one but eight glowing, queer flowers thrown by kind fairies to her fingers! With a crow of joy Nina stooped clumsily—for stooping still involved for her a drop on to her hands rather than a bending of her body—and began to examine her prize. They were as satisfactory, seen at close range, as they had been at a distance. Suddenly, however, as she poked and prodded them and lifted one, they altered. They were no longer flowers, with a single heart of flame in each; they were blazing from one to the other, and Nina held the cord. Instantly her own short white frock blazed with them. She gave a frightened scream. Then some one caught her, held her close, threw her down, beat out the flames with bare hands and rolled the little body in the grass, lying close over it. And this was Mary Garden.
By a coincidence Mary’s final rôle had been Florence Nightingale; she wore on her arm the Red Cross of the hospital as she flew to the child’s rescue, no one else at the instant near enough to render aid. With sure presence of mind and recklessness of her own danger, Mary beat out the flames enveloping the little creature, and saved her! But her own dress was a thin white cotton material, she wore a thin white apron, and her deep cuffs and collar were thinner than the regulation cuffs and collar of the nurse. In saving the child Mary’s costume caught fire. Though she threw herself upon the ground it was not smothered. Win ran to her, his face distorted with agony, in his hand a coat from some one’s continental uniform. Mark rushed after him, not keeping up, for the halting foot impeded him and he hated it as he had never before hated his impediment. He had snatched up a rug which Mrs. Moulton had been standing on all the evening; with it he made his best speed toward Mary. All the other men ran toward her when the alarm spread, but Win and Mark reached her first, and they wrapped her in the coat and the rug, tearing from her the flaming garments beneath them which threatened her.
The cries of little Nina had turned attention in that direction; to this alone Mary owed her chance to live. Only her outer clothing, her dress and apron, caught at first; help reached her before her inner garments had led the fire to her tender flesh. Yet, fight as they best could, with many hands hastening to help Win and Mark, the blazing materials could not be extinguished till Mary was badly burned. She lay in merciful unconsciousness upon the grass, the dark rug and blue and yellow coat enveloping her, her sweet face unmarred, as her head in a hollow of the grass let it turn up, white and drawn, to the star-strewn sky.
“What an end to our evening!” groaned Mr. Moulton, raising Mrs. Garden, who had fallen, half fainting, beside Mary upon the grass.
“Now I shall go mad; not act it!” Jane said fiercely, and Win turned to put his arm around her. Jane violently threw him from her. “Don’t any one dare to try to comfort me. Mary! Mary!” she screamed.