“They cost every bit of pocket-money we had!” grieved Jack. “I could have got half of them away if you’d given me a chance! Why on earth do you want to come round poking your noses in?”
“We never get a show,” said Judy mournfully. “We’re just hunted down like mad dogs! I should think persons of twelve and thirteen can be trusted to do a few little things alone, occasionally, anyhow!”
She twisted round, and suddenly screamed. A long tongue of flame, a licking, fiery tongue, ran up her thin frock, and in an instant it was blazing fiercely. I dropped Jack and sprang to catch her, flinging her down; Mrs. McNab, quicker than I, was beating at the burning silk. It was over more quickly than one can tell of it. Judy, very white, sat on the ground in the blackened remnants of her frock, while we gasped and hunted for vagrant sparks. Jack burst into a terrified howl, rather pitiful to hear.
“Oh, shut up, Jack!” Judy said. “I’m not killed. But I ’specs I would have been but for Mother and Miss Earle.”
“Are you hurt, Judy?” her mother asked, her voice shaking.
“Not a bit—I’m not even singed, I think. Jolly sight luckier than I deserve to be. I guess I can’t talk much about taking care of myself, can I?”
“Judith,” said Mrs. McNab, solemnly—her solemnity rather handicapped by the fact that she had passed a blackened hand across her face—“have I not warned you from your childhood that in the event of clothes catching fire one must cause the person in danger to assume an horizontal position?”
“You have, Mother,” responded Judy. “And I stayed vertical—and ran. Well, I’m a fool, that’s all!”
To this there seemed no answer. Mrs. McNab, regarding her daughter much as an owl may who has hatched out an imp, rose slowly to her feet. Suddenly Judy’s defiant look changed to one of swift concern. She sprang towards her mother.
“I say, Mother—you’re hurt!”