"Oh, dear, dear!" she wailed, as with trembling, suddenly stiff fingers she put on her clothes. "I'm a-going to be burned out! It's hard, at my time of life, just when I had got things tidy and comfortable. I was a-thinking of sending over for my niece to the Isle of Dogs, and getting her to come and stay with me, I was indeed, Missy. But there won't be any use in that now."
"Perhaps the fire won't come so far as this, after all," said the practical Elsie.
"Oh, yes, it will! It's 'most here now."
"Well, whether it does or not, I'm going to carry you home with me, where you will be safe. Now, Nursey, tell me which of your things you care most for, that we can take with us,—small things, I mean. Of course we can't carry tables and beds in my little cart."
The selection proved difficult. Nurse's affections clung to a tall eight-day clock, and were hard to be detached. She also felt strongly that it was a clear flying in the face of Providence not to save "Sparrow's chair," a solid structure of cherry, with rockers weighing many pounds, and quite as wide as the wagon. Elsie coaxed and remonstrated, and at last got Nursey into the seat, with the cat and a bundle of her best clothes in her lap, her tea-spoons in her pocket, a basket of specially beloved baking-tins under the seat, and a favorite feather-bed at the back, among whose billowy folds were tucked away an assortment of treasures, ending with the Thanksgiving goodies which had been brought over that morning.
"I can't leave that turkey behind, Missy, dear—I really can't!" pleaded Nursey. "I've been thinking of him, and anticipating how good he was going to be, all day; and I haven't had but one taste of your pie. They're so little, they'll go in anywhere."
The fire seemed startlingly near now, and the western sky was all aflame, while over against it, in the east, burned the first yellow beams of dawn. People were astir by this time, and men on foot and horseback were hurrying toward the burning woods. They stared curiously at the oddly laden cart.
"Why, you didn't ever come over for me all alone!" cried Nurse Sparrow, rousing suddenly to a sense of the situation. "I've be'n that flustered that I never took thought of how you got across, or anything about it. Where was your Pa, Missy,—and Hiram?"
Elsie explained.
"Oh, you blessed child; and if you hadn't come, I'd have been burned in my bed, as like as not!" cried the old woman, quite overpowered. "Well, well! little did I think, when you was a baby, and I a-tending you, that the day was to come when you were to run yourself into danger for the sake of saving my poor old life!"