“The stove got so awful hot,” observed Pinkie, “and it was trying to pick up that paper doll that Dolly burned her finger.”
“No, Auntie, the stove didn’t upset. But Mrs. Obbercrombie caught ablaze, and then she fell over against the other paper people, and they all flared up.”
“Whew, Dolly!” exclaimed Dick. “Then you kindled that whole fire yourself! You ought to have known better than to stuff a place with paper dolls and then set a match to it!”
“But I didn’t, Dick,” declared Dolly. “The fire was all right at first, only it kept making the little stove hotter and hotter, until it went off.”
“Well, it’s lucky Dick heard you yell,” put in Jack, “or the whole of the big house would have burned as well as the little one.”
“I don’t know what to say to you, Dolly,” said Aunt Rachel. “I remember that I did tell you I used to have a fire in that stove, but I only burned a tiny bit of paper and let it go right out. I never thought of a continued fire. And I really think you ought to have realised the danger of a fire near so much light paper.”
“Why, I never once thought of that, Aunt Rachel. I never s’posed fire could jump through an iron stove, and burn up a paper doll! I thought if we kept the little door shut, the flames would stay inside.”
“Oh, Dolly,” said Aunt Abbie, smiling a little in spite of herself, “you should have known better. But you’re not entirely to blame. We did tell you that we used to have real fire in that stove, but father was always with us to look after it. Children should _never_ play with fire alone.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that before, Aunt Abbie?” said Dolly, looking at her with a gentle reproach in her big dark eyes. “If you had, I’d have called you up, ’fore we lit it the first time!”
“Phyllis,” said Miss Rachel, turning to the little guest, “does your mother let you play with fire.”
“Why, no, Miss Rachel,” said Pinkie, in surprise. “But then, mother never lets us do any of the things you let Dick and Dolly do. We haven’t any garden or arbour or Lady Eliza or playhouse——”
At this, both Pinkie and Dolly began to cry afresh, for they remembered that now Dolly had no playhouse either! That beautiful house and barn and lawn and ponds,—all a mass of black, smoking ruins!