CHAPTER III.
THE FIRE.
The Christmas Eve Festivals were over, and night brooded silently over the great city, until the clock on Trinity rang for twelve; then a few moments went by, and the great bell at Jefferson market sent forth its warning, which was caught up and repeated faster, louder, more excitedly, as the mad flames, let loose from the nooks and corners where they had perhaps been smoldering through the day, leaped high in the air and ran riotously over the roofs of the old tenement house on —— street, where Ruth and Rena lay sleeping. “Fire,—fire,—” how the cry sounded through the streets, and what a clatter the firemen and the people made and how the women shrieked and the children cried, and nobody but God thought of Ruth and Rena. He was taking care of them, and woke Ruth just as the flames looked for an instant into the room, already filled with smoke, and then were subdued by a powerful jet of water, which left all again in darkness.
Ruth knew what it meant, and with a gasp of suffocation sprang from the bed, and groping her way to the door, opened it wide, hoping to admit the fresh air, without which she knew she must smother. But only thick, dark billows of smoke came rolling in, filling her lungs and eyes and mouth, as she tried to find her way back to her sister to whom she shrieked, “Wake, Rena; the house is on fire. Run for your life.”
The cry awoke Rena, who staggered toward the door, more by chance than design. Fortunately for her, it was still open, and, blinded by smoke, and wild with fright, she rushed down the stairway, and escaped unharmed into the street below, where the excited throng of people were running and shrieking, and where she would have been trampled to death, if a city missionary, had not found her as, in her night dress, with her little white feet nearly frozen, she ran hither and thither, sobbing in a pitiful kind of way for “Ruthy” to come and get her. One of the mission houses received her, and when the Christmas dawn broke over the city, and the bells were pealing merrily she lay on one of the little cots asleep, her lips occasionally whispering softly, “Come, Ruthy, come.”
The fright and exposure brought on a low fever, and for weeks kind nurses watched by her trying to make out something from her not very clear story.
“Mother’s dead,” she said, “I haven’t any papa; Ruthy and me lives alone, and sells pins and things, only Ruthy sells ’em and I keep house, and she’s burned, and I’s Rena Cutler and she isn’t.”
This was her story, and as nothing more could be learned of her or of the Ruth of whom she talked, and as it was known that several had perished in the flames, it seemed probable that Ruth was one of them; and Rena’s fever ran higher, and she talked of the baby of Bethlehem and Jesus’ birthday party, and the buns from Purssell’s, but after a time she grew better, and was interested in things around her, and was a great favorite with every one and happy in her new home, where all the influences were calculated to strengthen the good there was in her when she lived with Ruth in the old house.
But she never forgot “poor Ruthy,” whom she believed to have been burned to death, and every night she prayed that God would make her “good enough to go some day to Heaven where Ruthy and mother were; amen, for Christ’s sake, please.”