FLAMES
For the girls during the happy, work-filled, pleasure-filled days
that followed, only one cloud darkened the horizon. That was the
continued strange behavior of Will Ford.
About a week after their arrival, Grace had received a letter from
him, saying that he was coming on for an indefinite stay. Betty found
her friend with the letter clenched tight in one hand, while the
other crushed a handkerchief into a hard little ball.
"Why, Grace, what is the matter?" Betty sat down beside her and
slipped a sympathetic arm about her shoulders. "Tell me, have you had
bad news?"
"No, I suppose you couldn't exactly call it that," said Grace
wearily, folding up the letter and replacing it carefully in its
envelope. "As a rule I'd think it was mighty good news. Will is
coming to Camp Liberty."
"Oh, has he enlisted, after all?" cried Betty impulsively, and the
next minute could have bitten her tongue out for her thoughtlessness.
The tears had risen to Grace's eyes and she had turned away.
"No," she said, very softly. "He hasn't enlisted."
Betty's brow puckered in bewilderment.
"Did he say why he was coming on?" she asked, not knowing just what
to say.
"He said he was coming on business," Grace replied listlessly, then
added, with a sudden fierce outburst of emotion: "I wish he'd stay in
Deepdale. I wish, if he can't be honorable and live up to his ideals
like the other boys, he wouldn't come where they are. If he is my
brother, I'm ashamed----"
"Hush, Grace, hush," cried Betty soothingly, putting a firm hand over
her friend's mouth. "You're all excited and worked up now or you
wouldn't say such things. Didn't I tell you before that Will has his
reasons? Are you going to let a friend have more faith in him than
his own sister?"
"Betty Nelson," Grace began angrily, then broke down and began to sob
weakly. "I can't help it," she said, as Betty tried to comfort her.
"I've always loved Will so, and been so proud of him. He's been such
a good brother, too! I simply can't understand it!"
"Never mind," went on Betty soothingly, trying desperately to think
of something really comforting to say. "Maybe after Will gets here
he'll explain things. Till then, as my mother says, we'll just be
'canty wi' thinkin' aboot it.'"
But when the conversation was reported to the other girls, it
troubled them a good deal, and they longed to solve the mystery. And
when Will came he refused to be of any help whatever, keeping almost
entirely to himself, and answering questions put to him vaguely, if
at all. His actions became more and more mysterious, and it was
absolutely impossible to make him out.
"Just leave him alone," was Allen's advice, and the girls were
reluctantly obliged to follow it.
"But I wish I knew!" sighed Betty.
"Yes," was all Allen answered.
Then something happened that for a time drove the mystery from their
minds. It was after a particularly long and hard day, when the girls
had been entertaining at the Hostess House all morning and part of
the afternoon.
Then about three or four o'clock in the afternoon, they had gone
downtown to do some very necessary shopping, and had been unable to
get back to dinner till seven o'clock; and that evening the boys had
arranged to take them to the theater.
By the time it was all over, and the boys had left them at the
Hostess House, they were very, very tired and very, very happy.
"I never felt so sleepy in my life," said Grace, sitting down on the
edge of the bed and stretching her arms above her head. "And yet
we've had such a good time. If somebody doesn't give me another
chocolate I won't be able to stay awake long enough to get undressed.
Thanks, Amy, you always were a friend of mine."
"Well, I never laughed so much in my life," declared Mollie, pulling
off her slipper and wiggling her toes contentedly. "I think it's
perfectly wonderful to go out with the boys in uniform. They look so
splendid and we feel so very important."
"Goodness, don't you think they feel important, too?" yawned Grace.
"I know that Teddy Challenger does."
Teddy Challenger was a new-made friend of the boys, whom Allen had
brought along for Amy, Will having refused to make one of the party
on the plea of having important business to attend to.
"Oh, I don't know," said Betty, thoughtfully running the comb through
her hair. "He seems like a mighty nice fellow to me and the boys all
like him."
"Well, Allen won't, if Teddy doesn't mind his P's and Q's," said
Mollie, with a wickedly significant glance at Betty, which caused
that young person to flush prettily.
"I don't even know what you mean," she announced demurely, and they
all laughed at her.
"I wish you people would stop talking," Grace broke in plaintively.
"I've simply got to get some sleep!"
And they slept the hearty sleep of tired girlhood till about four
o'clock in the morning. Then Amy, in the room next to Betty and
Mollie, rubbed her eyes, coughed a little, then sat up with a cry of
alarm.
Smoke was curling thickly in around the crack in the door and the air
was hot and suffocating. Somewhere the sound of crackling, snapping
wood, the lurid flare of flames----
"Fire! fire!" she gasped, struggling to her feet and feeling blindly
for her clothes. "Grace, Grace, wake up! Grace----" her voice rose to
a scream as she saw that Grace was sleeping on.
"Oh, please, please wake up," she moaned, seizing Grace by the
shoulders and shaking her wildly. "You must, you must! Grace, the
house is on fire!"
Slowly the heavy eyelids opened, then Grace struggled to a sitting
posture, supported by Amy's quivering arm, and gazed wildly about
her. Then she sprang to her feet, swaying dizzily, and with Amy's arm
still about her, they felt blindly for the door.
They found the knob at last and, after a nightmare moment when the
flames roared louder, and the smoke clutched viciously at their
throats, flung the door open and staggered into the hall.
A blast of heat and smoke sent them reeling back into the room. Amy
closed the door with a little moan.
"The other stairs!" gasped Grace, fairly dragging her friend forward.
"Maybe--it hasn't reached--them--yet----"
"There's--Mollie and--Betty," cried Amy, clutching at her throat and
coughing spasmodically. In the frantic terror of the moment they had
forgotten everything but their own great danger.
"We must--get--them--out!" gasped Grace, rushing into their chums'
room and frantically shaking Betty, while Amy vainly tried to waken
Mollie. The girls still slept on in the semblance of ordinary,
healthy slumber.
"What can we do?" cried Amy hysterically. "We can't leave them here,
and we can't----"
"Come on! We've got to--get some--help!" Grace fumbled for the knob
and finally succeeded in getting the door opened.
As they had hoped, the stairway at the rear of the house was still
intact, although the smoke was so dense they had to feel every inch
of the way.
Oh, the nightmare of it! Long years afterward the girls would live it
over again in their dreams, and wake up drenched in perspiration,
quivering and shaking with terror.
When they finally reached the outer air they were smoke begrimed,
wild-eyed and the tears were rolling down their faces unnoticed and
unchecked.
The fire, which had started inside, and had gained a good foothold
before any trace of it could be seen from the outside, had been
discovered by one of the guards, who had immediately sent in an
alarm. Already the shriek of the fire engine could be heard, soldiers
were being hurried out from the barracks to help in the rescue work,
and all was noise and confusion.
A group of women who had escaped from the house before the girls, and
who stood huddled together in a terrified group, rushed forward at
sight of them, and gathered about them eagerly.
But Grace was not to be detained. She pushed ruthlessly past the
women, and ran to intercept a group of firemen who were rushing down
upon them.
"Two girls," she gasped, catching one of them by the arm and holding
on desperately. "At the head of the stairs--unconscious--get them----"
And then Grace, who had done her gallant best, tumbled down in a
little heap, having fainted.