Part 22 (1/2)

Barbara, notwithstanding her weighty nickname of the Encyclopedia, was agile, and lost no time in flying after her, urged to speed by the girls. Although inclined to poke fun sometimes at Barbara for her absent-mindedness and love of books, the girls were her firm friends.

They loved her for her kindly heart and sincere efforts to help others.

There was a shout of victory when it was seen that the Encyclopedia had captured her head-gear, and they were all clapping vociferously when an automobile rounded the bend in the road. The car turned out to be the doctor's, whose chauffeur had promised to meet him near the cross-roads as he had to be in his office by five that afternoon.

The doctor quickly a.s.sisted Mrs. Morrow into the car as she had decided to ride, and then stood and waited while the Pioneers-two of whom had been invited to join their Director-urged Kitty with her iron pot, and the Flower with her griddle to accept the invitation.

The girls finally consented, and with many waves of the hands to the pedestrians, and a loud honk, honk, the car glided down the road and out of sight.

Helen, Nathalie, and Edith, as they lived near one another, bade their mates good-by, and, as they had decided to take a short cut home, turned down a side path. As they strolled slowly along a road running by a low stone wall hedging a pasture, where a brook twisted like a silver cord in the undulating gra.s.s, Edith asked her companions if they did not want to walk to the Bluff, where they would have a fine view of the bay in the distance.

”Oh, yes,” a.s.sented Helen, ”it is a lovely view, Nathalie, and will only be a step out of the way if we go by the brook.”

Nathalie, although feeling somewhat tired, was anxious to visit the Bluff, and a minute later the three girls climbed the stone barricade and were keeping pace with the brook's windings as it leaped boisterously over a bed of stones, or crept lingeringly, with murmuring ripples, between gra.s.s-fringed banks.

Presently they wandered into the shade of the trees, where, to Nathalie's surprise, she found the old brook bed. Instead of being earth and stones, however, it was green and flower-starred, overshadowed by weeping willows and silver birches, their interlaced tops bending low as if seeking their old-time friend with its murmuring song.

Lulled by the mossy dell and the fragrance of the woodland posies, the girls loitered, and did not realize that the afternoon was waning until they reached the Bluff. They raced to the top, where Nathalie's joy at being the fleetest was forgotten, as with stilled eyes she gazed upon the fertile strip of valley below, its green specked by tiny white cottages and washed by the waters of the bay that shone in the glow of the setting sun like a sheet of bra.s.s.

The air was becoming chilled by the mist that was hovering in the distance, and they turned and quickly made their way back to the road.

Whereupon, Edith insisted that they take the summit road, leading over a small hill at one end of the town, which she declared would save time.

Her companions a.s.sented, and in a short s.p.a.ce they were pantingly trudging up the slope, and then, beginning to realize how tired they were, they sat down on a rock near the edge of the summit to rest. Lured by the changing colors of the afterglow they grew silent, awed, perhaps, by the calm that hushes all nature when the light of day is fading into the misty shadows of twilight.

Nathalie had turned from the mountains of pink foam that floated up from the golden west, and was gazing down at the town, where little twinkling lights were beginning to peep here and there between the tree-tops, when Edith suddenly cried, ”Oh, look at that smoke!” pointing to a street just below the slope where black columns of smoke were rus.h.i.+ng upward.

”Some one must be making a big bonfire,” answered Helen inertly, as her eyes followed the direction of Edith's finger.

”Why, Helen, that is not a bonfire,” was the Sport's quick retort. ”Oh, I saw a flame shoot up!” she added excitedly.

”So did I!” exclaimed Nathalie, springing on her feet. ”And oh, there's another.”

”Why, the church is on fire!” shouted Edith. ”There-don't you see-the flames are coming out of the back!”

The girls with dazed eyes and beating hearts looked at the old Methodist church, set back from a tree mantled road, within a few feet of a white cottage, the parsonage, that nested like some white bird in the shelter of the waving boughs of the trees.

”Oh, girls,” wailed the Sport, as she turned abruptly and gazed at them with an awe-struck countenance; ”it is the church-and the new organ-they were to finish it to-day!” She wrung her hands frantically.

Her companions made no reply, their eyes were glued on the columns of smoke that hurtled in dense ma.s.ses up into the air.

”I don't believe any one knows about it!” exclaimed Helen. ”Oh, what shall we do? It will be of no use to shout 'Fire!' we are too far away.”

”Oh, I know what we can do,” cried Edith heatedly. ”We can run to the fire-house and give the alarm!”

But Helen had already started forward, and Nathalie followed blindly, not even knowing where the fire-house was. Edith, like the flash of a flame, shot ahead of the two girls, and the next instant was tearing like some wild thing down the hill. In a few moments she had turned up a road and was speeding in the direction of a red house with a funny little cupola that loomed up above the small cottages surrounding it.

”Fire!” yelled the Sport, as she tore frantically along. Helen took up the cry, but Nathalie, although she tried to follow her example, only succeeded in making a hoa.r.s.e sound that died away almost as soon as it left her whitened lips.

As her breath began to come in gasps she was half tempted to stop and let the other two girls give the alarm. But something told her that would not be the act of a Pioneer, and she struggled on until she arrived in front of the old ramshackle building with the red cupola which looked as if it had once done service as a barn.