GRATITUDE
The three girl chums stared at each other.
"I guess that means all of us!" said Jo.
Nan ran to meet the boy.
"Is my Aunt Emma all right?" she asked. "She--isn't--Isn't she hurt at
all?"
The boy grinned.
"Says she feels better than she has for a long while. Seems like the
fright agreed with her!"
Nan hesitated, looking from the boy to the house.
"Some one ought to stay here to break the news to Mother and Dad," she
began.
"I'll stay," Jo offered, but the suggestion was instantly shouted down.
"I guess you'll not!" cried Nan. "Aunt Emma wants to see the girl who
saved her life, and that girl's name is certainly Jo Morley! You go,
Jo!"
"I should say so!" declared Sadie.
The controversy might have lasted some time had not the hired man
offered his services.
"I'll wait," he said. "You three run along and never mind the house.
I'll take care of everything."
The girls hesitated no longer. Together they started off toward the
Jameson house.
On the road they met Annie O'Brien. Annie, though still sheepish and
penitent because of her neglect of the invalid, appeared secretly
pleased about something.
When stopped and questioned by Nan, however, she would reveal nothing,
merely saying that she must hurry on to the house and get supper.
"Rather late in the day to think about it," remarked Sadie. "Seems to
me Annie O'Brien had better stick to her job."
"Probably Mother will think something like that," agreed Nan. "Annie
likes the hired man," she added. "She makes all sorts of excuses to
visit the Jamesons. We've always thought it was funny, but to-day it
came near being serious. I suppose because Mother and I were out and
Aunt Emma probably dozing in her chair, Annie thought this was a good
chance to visit down the street!"
"I hate to think what would have happened if there had been fire as
well as smoke," said Jo, with a shudder.
"My, but you were brave, Jo," said Sadie admiringly. "Just jumped
through the window without a thought of what might happen to you on
the other side."
"I was thinking of Miss Emma," Jo said simply.
"And then, when you stayed in the room, we made sure something terrible
had happened and came after you," Nan said.
"Something terrible nearly did happen, both to your Aunt Emma and me,"
returned Jo, with a rueful smile.
"I know, and you can better believe Aunt Emma will hear the whole of
it. You won't lose anything, Jo."
"Now, listen!" Jo said, alarmed. "If you are going to try to make
me out a heroine or any silly thing like that, I'm going home right
now----"
"Try to do it!" laughed Nan.
She had one of Jo's arms in hers, and at the words Sadie grasped the
other.
"You are both bigger than I," said Jo, in her best tragedy-queen
manner. "You know that I have no chance to escape, brutes that you are!"
The chums soon reached the Jamesons' gate, and as they pushed it open
Mrs. Jameson herself came out of the house and beckoned to them.
Her face was alight with that same mysterious glow that the girls had
noticed on Annie's countenance.
"Aunt Emma?" Nan queried anxiously. "Is she all right, Mrs. Jameson?"
The latter nodded, finger to lips. She was a handsome woman in her late
thirties, tall and graceful, and with hair that was almost white. Her
interest in the invalid at the Harrison house was as great as it was
genuine. She was a familiar figure at the house down the street and
spent many an afternoon with Miss Emma, telling her the news of the
town or reading light literature as the latter's mood required.
At a loss to understand the look of happiness on the face of this good
neighbor, Nan would have questioned her further but that Mrs. Jameson
forestalled her.
"Come in and see your Aunt Emma for yourself," she said.
Mrs. Jameson of course knew Nan's chums, so that no introduction was
necessary.
The girls followed the lady of the house into the big front room that
was library and sitting room combined.
Miss Emma was propped up in a big easy chair, cushions beneath her,
cushions behind her head, and cushions under her feet. She looked by no
means as white and weary as the girls had feared to find her. On the
contrary, her eyes were bright and there was an unusual tinge of color
in her face.
Nan ran to her and flung an arm about the frail shoulders.
"Oh, Aunt Emma, I'm so thankful you are safe! When we heard you cry out
from your room and knew that you were in the burning house alone we
were horribly frightened!"
"I know!" Miss Emma stroked the fair head gently with a thin,
blue-veined hand. "But I am all right now. So don't cry, dear. Yes,
you are crying!" The thin hand went beneath Nan's chin and turned the
girl's face up, revealing an April face upon which tears and smiles
were intermingled.
"Here, take my handkerchief and stop that, child! There's nothing in
the world to cry about!" Nan accepted the handkerchief and hugged her
aunt again in thankfulness for her safety.
Sadie and Jo were standing just within the doorway, uncomfortably
watching the intimate scene.
"Let's run away!" Jo whispered to Sadie. "They don't know we're here!"
But in this Nan's Aunt Emma immediately proved her wrong.
"I want to know who it was came into my room and carried me to the
window," she said in a voice that, for her, was unusually determined.
"I thought it was Nan, but now I realize it wasn't her voice I heard
at all."
"Jo did it, Aunt Emma," Nan said before Jo, backing hastily to the
door, could escape. "She was wonderful! She told us where to put the
ladder and then swarmed up it like a little monkey."
"Oh, hush, Nan, please!" cried Jo, who hated above all things to be
praised.
"I won't hush!" cried Nan. "Aunt Emma asked a question, and certainly
she has a right to know who saved her life!"
"I didn't!" protested Jo. "When you and Sadie reached me I was about
all in."
"And why?" retorted Nan. "Because you risked your life--that's why!"
Mrs. Jameson smiled as Miss Harrison, eyes bright, beckoned Jo to come
closer.
Jo knelt beside the invalid's chair and put a strong, tanned hand over
Miss Emma's thin one.
"I didn't do anything, really--although I tried to," she protested.
"You fainted----"
"Yes, I remember that, now!"
"And I managed to carry you as far as the window. But it was lucky that
Sadie and Nan were there, for I could never have lifted you to the shed
roof alone."
"I owe a great debt to all you girls," the invalid said slowly. "But
I owe a little more to you, my dear, because you risked your life so
gallantly and fearlessly to save mine. I wish there were something I
could do to show you how I feel, Jo Morley."
"You can try to get well, if you please," said Jo with one of her quick
smiles. "That would please me better than anything else!"
"Which reminds me, Miss Emma," broke in the soft voice of Mrs. Jameson,
"that you have not yet told the girls your great news!"
The girls looked wonderingly from Miss Harrison to Mrs. Jameson, then
back to the former again.
Miss Emma's face flushed. She made a motion as though to rise from her
chair. She was trembling suddenly with an almost childish excitement.
"At the moment I heard Jo's voice in the room," she said swiftly, "I
tried to struggle to my feet. In one great effort I did raise myself!
For a moment I stood upon my feet!"