"You'd better not undress, Henrietta," she said. "There is a fire and we may have to get out. You may have time to do a good deal, if you hurry—even to pack your trunk. You'd better put on your furs. It's terribly cold."
Henrietta was not flurried. "I'll be ready in a jiffy, Sally. Run along now."
Sally ran and woke her mother, telling her to get dressed quickly while she went for the servants. On her way up, she knocked at Charlie's door. She came downstairs presently, settled the servants in the hall, and went up to her room to help her mother.
Then the firemen came with a tremendous clanging of bells and shrieking of whistles, reveling in noise. Sally laughed when she heard them, and her mother laughed with her, rather nervously. The rest of it was a sort of nightmare to Sally and she had no very distinct recollection of any part of it. There was great confusion, and firemen in the most unexpected places, and hose through the halls and on the stairs. Fox and Henrietta had packed their trunks and Patty had two pillows and a wire hair-brush, which she insisted upon carrying about with her.
Then they were ordered out, and Sally found herself out in the night and the cold amid the confusion of firemen and engines and horses and ice. For both Appletree and Box Elder streets seemed full of hose, which leaked at every pore and sent little streams of water on high, to freeze as soon as they fell and form miniature cascades of ice on which an old man—a young man, for that matter—might more easily slip and fall than not. It was very dark out there, the darkness only made more dense by the light from the lanterns of the firemen and the sparks from an engine that was roaring near. They were throwing water on the outside of the house—two streams; and Sally wondered why in the world they did it. There was no fire visible. Perhaps Fox would know. And she looked around.
Their faces could just be made out, in the gloom; her mother and Charlie, Charlie with the bored look that he seemed to like to assume, copied after Everett; and Patty, still with her two pillows and her wire hair-brush, looking frightened, as she was; and Henrietta and Fox and the huddled group of the servants. She could not see Uncle John. There were not many spectators, which is not a matter for surprise. There is little interest in trying to watch a fire which one cannot see, late on a night which is cold enough to freeze one's ears or fingers, and the curbstone is but cold comfort.
Fox and Henrietta were talking together in low tones. "Fox," asked Sally, "do you know why they are throwing water on the outside of the house. For the life of me, I can't make out."
"For their own delectation, I suppose," he answered soberly. "It is a fireman's business—or part of it—to throw water on a building as well as all over the inside, when there is any excuse. Besides, the water, as it runs off the roof and all the little outs, forms very beautiful icicles which, no doubt, delight the fireman's professional eye. Think how pretty it will look to-morrow morning with the early sun upon it."
Sally chuckled. "I see them dimly," she returned, "but very dimly. They ought to have a search-light on them."
"I believe there is one," he observed. "They will have it going presently."