"How perfectly foolish!" cried Marjory, stamping her foot in helpless rage. "Of course somebody'll get her out--there's two men going in now--but how perfectly silly for her to go in at all!"
Mabel, however, was not feeling at all foolish. No, indeed. The little girl, to her own way of thinking, was doing a worthy, even a heroic, deed. She was rescuing the precious two dollars and forty-seven cents that her class had so laboriously raised to buy Miss Bonner a birthday gift. She would have liked to accomplish it in a little less spectacular manner, but, no other way being available, she had made the best of circumstances and was ignoring the crowd. She hoped, indeed, that no one had noticed her; with so much else to look at it seemed as if one small girl might easily remain unobserved. To be sure she was risking her life, the life of the only little girl that her parents possessed; but that seemed a small affair beside two dollars and forty-seven cents. The roof might fall, the cornice might drop, the huge chimney might collapse, the suffocating smoke or scorching flames might suddenly pour into that still unburned lower room. Let them! Heroes never stopped for such trifles with such a sum at stake.
By this time, Jean, Marjory and Bettie were white and absolutely speechless with fear. Four firemen were sitting on Dr. Bennett to keep him from rushing in after the little girl he had promptly recognized as his own, and five women were supporting and encouraging Mrs. Bennett, who had grown too weak to stand although she still had her wits about her.
"Fifty dollars reward," Mr. Black was shouting, "to the man that gets that child!"
He would have gone after her himself, but Mrs. Crane had him firmly by the coat-tails and both Dr. and Mrs. Tucker were clinging to his arms.
"Be aisy, be aisy," Mrs. Malony, the egg-woman was murmuring to the world in general. "Miss Mabel's the kind thot's always escapin' jist be the skin av her teeth. Rest aisy. Thim fire-laddies'll be havin' her out av thot dure in another jiffy."
But, although the crowd rested as "aisy" as it could, the moments went by and no Mabel appeared.
With every instant the fire grew worse. By this time, the smoke and angry sheets of flame had burst through the roof and were streaming, with a mighty, threatening roar, straight up into the blackened sky--a splendid sight that was visible for a long distance. There was no water to check the mighty fire, for, a very few moments after the hose had been attached, the hydrant had burst and the water that should have been busy quenching the fire was quietly drenching the feet of many an unheeding bystander.