For a few days after this, Dotty Dimple had little time to think of her new resolution.  Nothing occurred to call forth her anger, but a great deal to fill her with astonishment and awe.

The three little girls, for the first time in their lives, were learning a lesson in the uncertainty of human events.  They had never dreamed that anything about their delightful home could ever change.  If they thought of it at all, they supposed their dear father and mother, and their serene grandmamma Read, would always live, and be exactly as they were now; that their home would continue beautiful and bright, and there would be “good times” in it as long as the world stands.

It is true they heard at church that it is not safe for us to set our affections too strongly upon things below, because they may fail us at any moment, and there is nothing sure but heaven.  Still, like most children, they listened to such words carelessly, as to something vague and far away.  It was only when they were left, in one short day, without a roof over their heads, that Susy sobbed out, ­

“O, Prudy, this world is nothing but one big bubble!”

And Prudy replied, sadly, ­

“Seems more like shavings!”

You all know how an innocent-looking fire-cracker set Portland ablaze, but you can have little idea of the terror which that woeful Fourth of July night brought to our three little girls.

When I think of it now, I fancy I see them speeding up and down that departed staircase, trying to help the men carry water to pour on the roof.  The earnestness of their faces is very striking as Susy brandishes a pail, Dotty a glass pitcher, and Prudy a watering-pot, in the delusive hope that they are making themselves useful.

After this, when the children have had a troubled sleep, and wake in the morning to find the house actually on fire, the horror is something always to be remembered.  Flames are already bursting out of some of the lower windows.  It is no longer of any use to pour water.  There is no time to be lost.  Mrs. Parlin hurries the children down stairs, and out of the house, under their grandmother’s protection.

They thread their dismal way up town, through smoke and flame, Susy shedding tears enough to put out a common coal fire.  It is, indeed, a bitter thing to turn their backs upon that dear old home, and know for a certainty that they will never see it again!  In the place where it stands there will soon be a black ruin!

“The fire is lapping and licking,” says Prudy, “like a cat eating cream.”

“I hope it has a good time eating our house up!” cried Dotty, in wrath.

Susy groans.  Dotty thinks they are going to be beggars in rags and jags.  Prudy, always ready with her trap to catch a sunbeam, says that after all there are other little girls in the world worse off than they are.  Susy thinks not.

“O, children, you are young and can’t realize it; but this is awful!”

Dotty tries to be more wretched than ever, to satisfy her eldest sister’s ideas of justice.  She sends out from her throat a sound of agony, which resembles a howl.

Prudy’s chief consolation is in remembering, as she says, that “God knows we are afire.”  Prudy is always sure God will not let anything happen that is too dreadful.  She has observed that her mother is calm; and whatever mamma says and does always approves itself to this second daughter.

But Susy can only wring her hands in hopeless despair.  She has helped save the books, still she “expects they will burn up, somehow, on the road.”  Her pony has been trotting about through the night; his hair is singed, and she “presumes it will strike in and kill him.”  The world is, to Susy’s view, one vast scene of lurid horrors.  If she couldn’t cry, she thinks she should certainly die.

But this strange night came to an end.  Dreadful things may and do happen in this world, but, as a general rule, they do not last a great while.  The fire did its work, and then stopped.  It was fearful while it raged, and it left a pitiful wreck; still, as Mrs. Parlin said, it was “not so bad but it might have been worse.”  “Nothing,” she always declared, “ought to make us really unhappy except sin.”

“And here we are, all alive,” said she, with tearful eyes, as she tried to put her arms around the three little girls at once.  “All alive and well!  Let us thank God for that.”

“I guess I shan’t cry much while I have my blessed mother to hold on to,” said Prudy, pressing her cheek against Mrs. Parlin’s belt-slide.

“Nor I neither,” spoke up Dotty, very bravely, till a sudden spasm of recollection changed her tone, and she added, faintly, “If ’twasn’t for my cunning little tea-set!”

“I shouldn’t care a single thing about the fire,” sobbed Susy, “if it hadn’t burnt our house up, you know.  You see it was where we lived.  We had such good times in it, with the rooms as pleasant as you can think!  Nothing in the world ever happened:  and now that pony!  O, dear, and my room where the sun rose!  I don’t know what’s the matter with me, but seems as if I should die!”

“And me, too,” sighed Dotty.  “I just about know that man threw my tea-set into the Back Cove; and now we haven’t any home!”

“It is home where the heart is, children,” said Mrs. Parlin, tenderly; but something choked her voice as she spoke.

Though she was never known, either then or afterwards, to murmur, still it is barely possible she may have felt the loss of her precious home as much as even Susy did.

For the present the family were to remain at Mr. Eastman’s; and it was in the parlor chamber of that house that Mrs. Parlin and her three children were standing, glad to find themselves together once more, after the night of confusion.

Grandma Read, who was as patient as her daughter, “tried to gather into stillness,” and settle herself as soon as possible to her Bible.  But the change from the Sabbath-like quiet of her old room to the confusion of this noisy dwelling must have tried her severely.

Mr. and Mrs. Eastman, and Mr. and Mrs. Parlin, were busy enough from morning till night, day after day, searching for missing goods, and aiding the sufferers from the fire.  The Eastman mansion was left to the tender mercies of the five children ­the Parlins, and Florence, and Johnny.

Master Percy would probably look insulted if he were to be classed among the children.  In his younger days he had had his share in ringing people’s door-bells and then running away; now, in his maturer years, he did not scruple to tease little folks, when they could be “tickled with a straw” held under the chin, or when they were easily vexed, and answered him back with an angry word or a furious scowl.  He liked to torture his “cousin Dimple.”  He said she shot out quills like a little porcupine.  She was a “regular brick,” almost as smart as Johnny, and that was saying a great deal; for Percy regarded the youthful Johnny as a very promising child.  He was sorry to have him corrected for trifling follies.  If Percy had had the care of him, the little fellow would not have lived long, for the older brother quite approved of such amusements as crossing pins on the railroad track, running under horses’ feet, and walking on the dizzy roof of a house.

Mr. Eastman was always very busy, and his wife had a deal of visiting to do, so it usually happened that Johnny had more liberty than was good for him.

Mrs. Parlin knew this, and did not like to have Dotty thrown very much in his society, but just now it certainly could not be avoided; Dotty’s constant desire to “get out doors and run somewhere” seemed to be fully gratified, for Johnny despised the inside of a house more than she did, and they both roamed about during the day like a couple of gypsies.

Sometimes Prudy went with them, but their games were rather rough for her taste.  Susy and Florence were generally together, painting with water-colors, pasting scrapbooks, and doing a variety of things in which they did not care to have Prudy join.  The dear little girl might have been lonely, and possibly grieved, if she had been anything but a “bird-child.”  As it was, she sang when she had no one to talk with, and, whether the rain fell or the sun shone, always awoke with a smile, and found the world as beautiful as a garden.

She amused herself by writing in her little red journal, which had come out of the fire unharmed.  Here is her account of the tragedy: ­

    “July 7th. I ought to tell about the fire; but I can’t write with
    mother’s pen any more than Zip can write with a sponge.

    “I am so sorry, but a boy fired a cracker.  He didn’t mean to burn up
    the city at all.  He just touched it off for fun.

“There was going to be a procession, but I believe it didn’t process.  I never saw anything whiz and crack so in all my life!  The fire danced and ran all over the city as if it was alive!  It burnt just as if it was glad of it.  The trees are all black where the green was scorched off.  You wouldn’t think it was summer.  It doesn’t look like winter.  Father says it looks like a graveyard.

    “Dotty lost her tea-set.  Susy thought she should faint away, but she
    didn’t ­we couldn’t find the camphor bottle.  A man saved six eggs
    and the pepper box.

“It was real too bad grandma’s room was burnt up!  When I went into grandma’s room I used to feel just like singing.  Mother says that isn’t so bad as wickedness.  She says it is ’home where the heart is.’

    “Dotty hasn’t had any temper for five days.  Finis.”

Just about this time a letter came from Willowbrook, saying Mrs. Clifford was quite ill, and asking Mrs. Parlin to go to her.  Aunt Louisa said it was fortunate that the children could stay at their aunt Eastman’s.  She did not know that Mrs. Parlin left them there very reluctantly, having her own private fears that her youngest daughter might fall into mischief.

Dotty kissed her mother good by, and promised to be perfect; but Mrs. Parlin knew too well how the child’s resolutions were apt to wither away for want of root.