“Let her come to the window,” said Sheila, and room was made for her there. But nobody could keep still or help starting and shuddering at every sound from without. They could hear what a tumult was going on in another street, and it was hard to bear being shut up here; yet every messenger who went out for news came back saying they were safest where they were.
Then a sudden cheer arose from North and the youths about him, and in dashed Oscar, crying out—
“Here comes the fire-escape round the corner, with Lionel Benson to guide it! He has got out all right, and has brought it for us. Now we are as safe as anything! Good old Lionel! Now then, ladies, one at a time! We will have you all safe directly.”
Sheila suddenly went sick and white with the revulsion of feeling, and May, seizing Miss Adene’s hands, sobbed out—
“Oh, Cousin Mary, Cousin Mary, God has heard us, after all! I’m afraid I did not quite believe He would!”
The next minute a helmeted figure was among them, quietly settling matters, and sending one girl after another down the shoot, to be received with cries and cheers by those below.
But it took some little time, and Miss Adene, disengaging her hands from May’s, said quietly—
“I should like to go and have one more look into the hall. I shall have plenty of time before my turn comes.”
“Oh, let me go with you!” cried Sheila eagerly, and May, too, was filled with a sudden, timid, and irresistible curiosity. Oscar, who was standing beside his sister, took her hand at once, and said—
“Come, then, and see! But I think the worst is over now. They have had the hose at work some while now. But the place is like a kiln; you could hardly get through it now.”