FIGHTING FIRE.
A sudden scream of terror from the cottage roused Dick from his thinking, and laying the baby down he rushed in.
On the doorstep he met little Susy, with her lilac pinafore in flames. She had been trying to reach something from the mantelpiece, and had climbed up on the unsteady old fender. There was no guard in front of the open fire, and the draught had drawn her pinafore towards the bars and set it on fire, and the flames were mounting around her, and already her hair was singed.
But Lionheart knew what to do. With a spring and a cry he caught her just as she was rushing out-of-doors, and flinging her down he fell on her, and tore and clutched at the burning rags with his bare hands.
She screamed with fright rather than with pain, but Dick did not let go till the danger was past; and his clothes, being woollen, did not catch.
There was a scuffle of footsteps as Mrs. Fowley and two other women came in with a great outcry. And the sobbing child was wrapped in a big shawl, and the doctor sent for.
And her mother, to relieve her own fears, began as usual to upbraid Dick.
"It's all your fault, you good-for-nothing pauper! Why didn't you look after the child?"
"I thought you had her, she went out with you," he said, trembling with dread of more than a scolding, and scarcely able to bear the pain in his poor burned hands.
"Then you'd no business to think," she screamed. "What you've got to do is to mind the children, and anything else I've a mind to order you to do. Three years and better we've kep' you out of charity, and you don't earn shoe leather yet. Where's the baby?"