“When Edith entered the factory building there was no one in the office. The alarm of fire had just been shouted through the building and the superintendent had rushed out. Edith ran into one of the rooms on the ground floor where the men and women were already making their escape. She overheard some one say there was no danger; everybody would be able to get out. Her mother and father she believed at work on the top floor, and Edith started up the stairs. As she ran some one shouted to her to come down, as the stairways were filling with smoke. She kept on, although nearly knocked down any number of times by frightened people rushing past. Once Edith believed she was overcome by the smoke and dropped on the floor, and some one trampled over her. This seemed to bring her to her senses, for she got up and continued struggling up a flight of steps, black and thick with acrid fumes. She could hear people shouting and beating on a door at the top of the stairs.
“Edith insists that she had no idea of this door being locked or what she was going to accomplish, and for this reason deserves no special praise or reward. She was only fighting her way to her mother and father.
“She says she recalls puzzling over the fact that no one was running down these stairs as she dragged herself up. Then she put out her hand and touched a heavy steel door. She could see nothing and was scarcely conscious of what she was doing. The door would not move, so she threw herself against it blindly, searching for the key, found and turned it in the lock. The door seemed to fall open from the weight of the men and women who had been trying to rush it. Her mother happened to be on a lower floor. Edith’s own father carried her downstairs when the others were so crazed with fear they might have trampled her.”
Tory put her gloved hands against her hot cheeks and leaned over toward the open window of the car for a breath of the winter air.
“Please do not let us talk of the fire again, Sheila, not for some time anyhow, certainly not to Mr. Winslow. I dread the thought of it; I think of nothing else, waking or sleeping. It may seem absurd, but Edith Linder was much calmer than I when we talked of it.”
The Troop Captain put her arm about the younger girl.