“Everything comes to him who waits” is more or less true. Small Nina had been waiting all the evening to see one of those luminous bright things close by. As she went wistfully along the path now, a cord from which a line of the lanterns was suspended dropped from the farther branch to which it had been attached and fell at her feet.
Here they were, not one but eight glowing, queer flowers thrown by kind fairies to her fingers! With a crow of joy Nina stooped clumsily--for stooping still involved for her a drop on to her hands rather than a bending of her body--and began to examine her prize. They were as satisfactory, seen at close range, as they had been at a distance. Suddenly, however, as she poked and prodded them and lifted one, they altered. They were no longer flowers, with a single heart of flame in each; they were blazing from one to the other, and Nina held the cord. Instantly her own short white frock blazed with them. She gave a frightened scream. Then some one caught her, held her close, threw her down, beat out the flames with bare hands and rolled the little body in the grass, lying close over it. And this was Mary Garden.
By a coincidence Mary’s final rôle had been Florence Nightingale; she wore on her arm the Red Cross of the hospital as she flew to the child’s rescue, no one else at the instant near enough to render aid. With sure presence of mind and recklessness of her own danger, Mary beat out the flames enveloping the little creature, and saved her! But her own dress was a thin white cotton material, she wore a thin white apron, and her deep cuffs and collar were thinner than the regulation cuffs and collar of the nurse. In saving the child Mary’s costume caught fire. Though she threw herself upon the ground it was not smothered. Win ran to her, his face distorted with agony, in his hand a coat from some one’s continental uniform. Mark rushed after him, not keeping up, for the halting foot impeded him and he hated it as he had never before hated his impediment. He had snatched up a rug which Mrs. Moulton had been standing on all the evening; with it he made his best speed toward Mary. All the other men ran toward her when the alarm spread, but Win and Mark reached her first, and they wrapped her in the coat and the rug, tearing from her the flaming garments beneath them which threatened her.