Then the proud and happy juniors hastily divested themselves of their gay trappings and hurried away to join their friends and trip to inspiring music in the main hall below; thus Katherine was left with Dorothy alone on the stage.
"Wasn't it perfectly lovely, Miss Minturn?" exclaimed the girl in a rapturous tone and with shining eyes. "I never saw you look so pretty, and I never had such a happy time in all my life. I only wish I could have seen the whole of it."
"I think you will, later; or at least something very like it; for, when that flash light was thrown on, as the curtain went up the last time, somebody took a snapshot at us," Katherine replied, smiling fondly into the eager face.
"Oh! who was it?"
"Some one whom you know. Guess!"
"Uncle Phil?"
"Yes; he asked permission of the president of the class. But now I must see about getting you out of this place. I wonder where Alice can be!" said Katherine, looking out towards the deserted dressing room for the nurse, who had promised to be on hand to receive her charge as soon as everything was over.
She had been disconnecting several ropes of flowers that had been attached to the chair while she was talking, and, as no one came to assist her, she now rolled the girl towards the side of the stage, thinking, perhaps, she might get her off herself, as it was not very high.
But she had missed one rope, and, as it trailed along the floor, it swept over a saucer containing some still smoking Greek fire, or red light, that had been carelessly left just where it had been used.
The soft paper ignited in an instant, and the next moment the lower part of the lily chariot was ablaze.