"Oh, pshaw!" interrupted Pearl. "It's all right, I fancy."
Neither girl had recourse to "applied physics." Had she done so she could easily have discovered just _why_ it was unwise to use a lamp with a short chimney inside such a shaped globe as that hanging in chains in the front hall of the bungalow.
Ruth forgot the matter. It was Pearl herself who lit the hall lamp that evening. As before, they sat on the porch and played games and sang or told stories, all the long, bright evening.
Tess and Dot had gone to bed at half after eight. It was an hour later that Lucy suddenly said:
"It isn't Mr. Harrod," said Ann. "He's gone down to the Casino."
"It isn't tobacco smoke I smell," declared Lucy, springing up.
"Oh, Lute!" shrieked Agnes. "Look at the door!"
A cloud of black, thick smoke was belching out of the front hall upon the veranda. One of the other girls shrieked "Fire!"
Those next few minutes were terribly exciting for all hands at the Spoondrift bungalow. A single glance into the hall showed Ruth Kenway that the hanging lamp had burst, and the place was all ablaze.
There was but one stairway, and the children were in one of the low-ceilinged rooms above. Tess and Dot could only be reached by climbing up the long, sloping roof of the bungalow, and getting in at the chamber window.
While some of the girls ran for water--which was useless in the quantity they could bring from the kitchen tap in pots and pans--and others ran screaming along the street for help, Ruth "shinnied" right up one of the piazza pillars and squirmed out upon the shingled roof.
She tore her dress, and hurt her knees and hands; but she did not think of this havoc at the moment. She got to the window of the room in which her sisters slept, and screamed for Tess and Dot, but in their first sleep the smaller girls were completely "dead to the world."
There was the screen to be reckoned with before the oldest Corner House girl could enter. It was set into the window from the inside, and she could neither lift the window-sash nor stir the screen. So she beat the tough wire in with her fists, and they bled and hurt her dreadfully! Nevertheless, she got through, falling into the room just as the stifling smoke from below began to pour in around the bedroom door.