“We knew she was here, daddy,” gasped Eddie, “and came straight to help her.”
“Out o’ the way!” cried the laird as he grasped Mrs Moss in his arms and bore her away. “Mother and Flo are safe, boys. Look out for yourselves.”
“I’ll go for the photographs! Come, help me, Ted,” cried Archie, as he ran up the now smoking stairs.
“I’ll go for Milly!” cried the heroic Junkie, as, with flashing eyes, he dashed towards her room.
But Barret had gone for Milly before him! and without success. She was not in her room. “Milly! Milly!” he shouted, in tones of undisguised anxiety, as he burst out of the nursery, after finding, with his companions, that no one was there and that suffocation was imminent. Then, as no Milly replied, he rushed up to the garret in the belief that she might have taken refuge there or on the roof in her terror.
Just after he had rushed out of the nursery, Junkie burst in. The boy was in his element now. We do not mean that he was a salamander and revelled in fire and smoke, but he had read of fires and heard of them till his own little soul was ablaze with a desire to save some one from a fire—any one—somehow, or anyhow! Finding, like the rest, that he could scarcely breathe, he made but one swift circuit of the room. In doing so he tumbled on the chair on which the cause of all the mischief still sat smoking, but undeniably “dood!”
“Blackie!” he gasped, and seized hold of her denuded but still unconsumed wooden body.
A few moments later he sprang through the entrance door and tumbled out on the lawn, where most of the females of the establishment were standing.
“Saved!” he cried, in a voice of choking triumph, as he rose and held up the rescued and smoking doll.
“Doan! my da’ling Doan!” cried Flo, extending her arms eagerly to receive the martyr.