One end of the little house was all ablaze.

"The poor soul hasn't got out," cried Mr. Armatage, and with Mr. Bunker he charged for the door, burst it in, and dashed into the smoke which filled the interior.

Russ thought that Daddy Bunker was very brave indeed to do this. It looked to the boy as though both men would be burned by the raging fire.

But he was brave himself. He fought back his tears and ran to the stream to fill with water both the pails he carried.

When he came staggering back with the filled pails, the water slopping over his shoes, the first of the hands arrived. One man grabbed Russ's pails and threw the water upon the burning logs. Such a small amount of water only made the flames hiss and the logs steam. But soon other filled pails were brought. More of the cars with guests from the party arrived, and a chain of men to the stream was formed.

Almost at once Mr. Armatage and Daddy Bunker fought their way out of the burning cabin through the smoke, and they bore between them the screaming old woman. Mammy June was badly frightened.

"You're all right now, Mammy," declared Mr. Armatage, when he and Mr.

Bunker put her into the tonneau of the car. "Here, boy!" he added to Russ, "you stay with her."

"I got to lose all! I got to lose ma home!" wailed Mammy June. "If my Ebenezer had been yere, dat chimbley wouldn't have cotched fire."

"Can't be helped now," said Daddy Bunker soothingly. "We'll try to save your home, Mammy."

But although their intentions were of the best, this could not be done.

The cabin--as dry as a stack of straw--could not be saved. The pails were pa.s.sed from hand to hand as rapidly as possible, but the fire had gained such headway that it was impossible to quench it until the cabin was in complete ruins.

"You be mighty glad, Mammy June," said Mr. Armatage, finally giving up the unequal battle, "that you are saved yourself. And you wouldn't have been if this little Bunker hadn't seen the fire when he did."

"Bless him!" groaned the old woman, hugging Russ to her side in the car.

"If my Ebenezer had been home it wouldn't never have happened, Mistah Armatage."

She harped upon this belief incessantly as they finally drove back to the big house. The fright and exposure quite turned Mammy June's brain for the time. She was somewhat delirious.

"S'pose my Ebenezer come home and find de cabin in ruins. He mebbe will think Mammy June burned up, and go right off again. And he might come any time!"

The old woman talked of this even after they put her to bed and a doctor who chanced to be at Mrs. Armatage's party had attended her. The fire, and her bodily illness, had prostrated the old woman.

The end of that Christmas party was not as pleasant as the beginning. It was long after midnight before even the children were in their beds and composed for sleep. The party broke up at an earlier hour than might have been expected.

Rose slept in the room with Phillis and Alice Armatage. Just as she was dropping to sleep and after her companions were already in dreamland Rose saw the door of the room pushed open. The moon had risen, and Rose recognized Russ's tousled head poked in the open door.

"What do you want?" she demanded in a whisper. "Oh, Russ! there isn't another fire, is there?"

"No! Hush! I just thought of something."

"What is it?" asked Rose in the same low tone that Russ used.

"We can do something for Mammy June."

"We can't cure her rheumatism, Russ," said Rose. "Even the doctor can't do that in a hurry. He said so."

"No. She's worrying about her boy. That boy with the funny name.

Sneezer."

"Yes, I know," said Rose.

"She is afraid he will come back and find the cabin burned and go away again without her knowing it," said Russ gravely, tiptoeing to his sister's bedside.

"Yes. Mother says it's real pitiful the way she takes on," sighed the little girl.

"Well, Rose, you and I can help about that," said Russ confidently.

"How can we?" she asked, in surprise.

"We can write a sign and stick it up on a pole down there by the burned cabin. We'll make a sign saying that Mammy June is up here at the big house and for Sneezer to come and see her."

"Oh, goody!" cried Rose, but still under her breath. "That's a fine idea, Russ."

"Don't say anything about it to anybody," warned her brother, eager to make a secret of the plan that had popped into his head. "We'll write that sign early in the morning and go down there and stick it up. Want to?"

"Of course I do," said Rose, with a glad little jump in her bed. "I think you're just the smartest boy, Russ, to think of it. I won't say a word about it, not even to Philly and Alice."

With this plan dancing in her head Rose soon fell asleep while Russ stole back to the room where he slept with the smaller boys. After that the big house on the Meiggs Plantation became quiet for the rest of the long night.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE TWINS IN TROUBLE

Laddie and Vi Bunker felt as though they had been cheated. They had not been allowed to go to the fire, "when Mammy June's cabin had been burned all up," Vi declared. They had only seen the fire from an upper window of the big Armatage house.

"But it wasn't burned _up_, Vi," her twin insisted. "It was burned _down_."

"Russ said it was burned up when he came back from the fire--so now,"

Violet declared somewhat warmly.

"How can a house burn up? It just fell all to pieces into the cellar."

"There wasn't any cellar to Mammy June's house," Vi observed.

"Well, it fell down; so of course, it burned down."

"The flames went up," repeated Vi, quite as determinedly. "And the wood went with 'em--with the flames and smoke. So the cabin burned up."

What might have been the result of this discussion it would be hard to say had not the twins both felt so keenly their disappointment. Russ had gone to the fire and brought Mammy June out of the cabin and brought her up here to the big house! To tell the truth, Russ was so excited when he got back that in telling of the adventure he gave the younger children to understand that he had done it all himself. Daddy Bunker and Mr.

Armatage did not appear much in his story.

"Russ is always doing the big things," sighed Laddie. "It's just like a riddle----"

"What is?" almost snapped Vi, for she was just as disappointed as her twin brother.

"Why, Russ getting the best of everything. Why is it?" muttered Laddie, kicking a pebble before him in the path.