“Yes, Captain,” she answered, her eyes aglow while she smoothed refractory frills. She wore a wonderful trailing robe of tissue paper, “ruffled to the guards,” Billy said. On her head was a towering cap of the same; and a light wind bellied out her wide angel sleeves like sails before a spanking breeze.
She stood at the end of the creaking wharf, and one little bare arm was lifted high. She held a small fruit jar filled with water and beet juice. It was awkward, but Billy had insisted on the fruit jar,—“So’s it will be sure to break; it’s the only kind of a bottle that always will break.”
They fired up. An ominous sizz and clatter began. Five pairs of hands shoved the smart boat into the water at May Nell’s feet. The children shouted. The dog barked and the chickens cackled. And above all the din May Nell’s sweet voice rang out, “I christen thee, O wondrous vessel, The Fair Ellen.” She improvised hastily; for no one had thought to prepare a speech for the occasion.
The bottle went crash, and a furious yell informed the neighborhood that the Gang was “up to some new deviltry.”
But another and unexpected crash followed, and a shower of burning oil shot up and caught May Nell’s flimsy paper frock.
Yet before one could think, almost before the paper had time to burn, Jimmy sprang to her, seized her in his arms, tearing at the shrivelling paper, and jumped far out over the flaming boat into a deep pool.
For a horror-stricken moment no one spoke. Even the dumb creatures were still; and Buzz, thinking it all for his benefit, watched open-mouthed for the next act in the play.
But Mrs. Bennett, fleet though speechless, was at the water’s edge by the time Jimmy had risen with May Nell quite safe. She spluttered and choked a little; but Jimmy had been so quick there was not even a red spot on her flesh to show the touch of fire.
She was a queer draggled little creature, with her soaked and tattered dress, and her yellow curls all stringlets. Timidly she touched Jimmy’s blistered hands, realized what he had saved her from, and when she looked her gratitude into his dark eyes something awoke in his heart that never slept again.
“You had very soon to fight for the Douglases, didn’t you, Roderick Dhu?” she said, as Mrs. Bennett covered her with an apron, and Billy took her up and went toward the house.