Alexander would prowl up and down the room and stalk around the bed, never offering to get upon it, until we called out to one another:—
"Another morning, and we are still safe!"
Then, he would leap into Lucy's arms, and purr, and tickle her nose with his whiskers, until she couldn't speak for laughing. She had had him ever since he was born, and he slept on the foot of her bed at night. While she sat in my mother's lap, he was winding himself in and out between her feet, his tail carried aloft like a soldier's plume, and purring almost as loudly as a watchman's rattle. My mother looked down, presently, at him, and checked the absent-minded passes of her hand over Lucy's hair.
"Give him some milk, Marthy," she said, smiling. "I wish you had a coat like his, Lucy. I shouldn't be afraid then of your taking cold, or of your going too near the fire. Marthy! to-morrow you must hunt up a fender to put here, and see if one of your Miss Mary 'Liza's last winter's frocks won't fit Miss Lucy. It would do very well for her to play in. We must take good care of her while—this bad weather lasts."
I fancy she would have finished the sentence differently but for fear of saddening the child by intimating that her mother might be ill for a long time. She kissed Lucy in putting her down, and patted my shoulder, telling me to "be a good girl and very kind to my cousin."
"I am glad you all are so comfortable and happy here," she added. "I could not have you downstairs just now. Carry these things down, Marthy, and run up every little while to see how the young ladies are getting on. Be sure and keep up a good fire, Mary 'Liza, my dear. I trust you to look after the other children."
When she had gone I went to the window and flattened my nose against the glass to peer into the storm. It was a dormer-window, and the March snow was drifted high upon the roof on both sides of it, and upon the jutting eaves above it, until I looked out, as through a tunnel, into the jutting tree-tops. Beyond was a mad whirl of snowflakes that hid the nearest hills. The wind whined and scolded, and now and then arose into a hoarse bellow. I shivered, and slipped my cold hands up the sleeves of my stuff frock. We had circassian frocks for every day, and merino for Sundays. Our under petticoats were of flannel, and we wore, outside of these, quilted skirts interlined with wool. My mother had a nervous dread of fire.
A shriek of laughter turned me to the more cheerful scene behind me. Alexander the Great was chasing his own tail as violently as if he had just discovered it and considered it as an offence to his dignity. Lucy was clapping her hands to egg him on, and Mary 'Liza had sat down upon the pile of bedding to laugh at her ease. Before leaving the room Marthy had piled wood upon the andirons as high as she could reach up the chimney-throat without grazing her hands in withdrawing them, as was the rule in fire-architecture on Virginia plantations. The March wind, finding its way through many a crack and cranny, beat at the flames until they flared this way and that. The cat dashed dizzily across the hearth, and Lucy, with a cry of alarm, darted forward to snatch him from the dangerous neighborhood. She caught hold of him, and pulled him away, and the draught whipped her skirts into the hottest heart of the fire.
It was the work of an instant. The oily dressing of the cotton fabric may have made it the more inflammable. Rooted to the floor by horror, I saw a column of flame flash past me to the door, and heard the piercing wail grow fainter down the stairs.
My mother heard it in the distant room where the sick woman was sleeping quietly, the tiny baby on her arm. Shutting the door as she came out, the hostess flew across the house to the north wing, and met the burning child on the stairs. Eluding her by keeping close to the wall, she gained the upper room, saw, at one wild glance that her own little ones were safe, tore a blanket from the bed, overtook Lucy at the stair-foot, and smothered the flames with it.