Tweedles and I, with Mary and Annie, met the panic-stricken girls at the top of the steps. "Why didn't you go out through the dining room?" I asked sternly. I found that some one would have to be stern.
"Flames were there!" sobbed a great tall girl, the one from Texas.
Teachers in a fire are no more good than school girls. There were two on our corridor in Carter Hall, but I saw one of them go frantically back into her room and throw the bowl and pitcher out of her window and come out carefully holding a down cushion.
Dee was quite collected and cool.
"Come into our room, 117," she commanded all the screaming crowd. "There is no smoke there. You can get out of our window."
She immediately began tying the still-knotted sheets to our radiator and with a sly look at me she pulled another sheet off of her bed, muttering as she attached it to the others, "So it will be sure to reach the ground."
"I can't go down there! I can't! I can't!" screamed the girl from Texas.
"Nonsense! Then let some one else go first! You go, Page!"
"I think I had better see if all the girls are out of their rooms first. But I am not a bit afraid. See, twist the sheet around your arm this way and then catch hold with the other hand and there you go!" and I sent a spunky little freshman spinning to terra firma.
Dum and Dee got all the girls out in a few minutes, while I limped through all the rooms to see that no one was left. The rooms were in the greatest confusion imaginable as the inmates had endeavoured to save their clothes and had tied them up in bundles and thrown them out of the windows. I wondered if the other parts of the building had been emptied, but felt that I had better get out myself as the smoke was so thick you could cut it. Fortunately the moon was shining brightly for the electric light fuses were burnt out, and but for the moon and a few flash lights we would have been in total darkness.