But this strange night came to an end. Dreadful things may and do happen in this world, but, as a general rule, they do not last a great while. The fire did its work, and then stopped. It was fearful while it raged, and it left a pitiful wreck; still, as Mrs. Parlin said, it was "not so bad but it might have been worse." "Nothing," she always declared, "ought to make us really unhappy except sin."
"And here we are, all alive," said she, with tearful eyes, as she tried to put her arms around the three little girls at once. "All alive and well! Let us thank God for that."
"I guess I shan't cry much while I have my blessed mother to hold on to," said Prudy, pressing her cheek against Mrs. Parlin's belt-slide.
"Nor I neither," spoke up Dotty, very bravely, till a sudden spasm of recollection changed her tone, and she added, faintly, "If 'twasn't for my cunning little tea-set!"
"I shouldn't care a single thing about the fire," sobbed Susy, "if it hadn't burnt our house up, you know. You see it was where we lived. We had such good times in it, with the rooms as pleasant as you can think! Nothing in the world ever happened: and now that pony! O, dear, and my room where the sun rose! I don't know what's the matter with me, but seems as if I should die!"
"And me, too," sighed Dotty. "I just about know that man threw my tea-set into the Back Cove; and now we haven't any home!"
"It is home where the heart is, children," said Mrs. Parlin, tenderly; but something choked her voice as she spoke.
Though she was never known, either then or afterwards, to murmur, still it is barely possible she may have felt the loss of her precious home as much as even Susy did.
For the present the family were to remain at Mr. Eastman's; and it was in the parlor chamber of that house that Mrs. Parlin and her three children were standing, glad to find themselves together once more, after the night of confusion.
Grandma Read, who was as patient as her daughter, "tried to gather into stillness," and settle herself as soon as possible to her Bible. But the change from the Sabbath-like quiet of her old room to the confusion of this noisy dwelling must have tried her severely.