She sprang out of bed shrieking wildly, and pulled and shook poor little Mrs. Hassal, who, half suffocated with the smoke, lay motionless.
Pip slept at the Courtneys now, since the cottage was so taxed for room, Bunty and Peter across the passage, and Mr. Gillet had a camp bed in the sitting-room. No one had wakened till the little girl's wild shrieks rang through the house; the smoke had stupefied them all.
Then there was a terrible scene of confusion. The door of the bedroom was in a blaze--all the wall adjacent; the flames were licking at the long French window, and the curtains already burning.
Mr. Gillet went back one second for his thick coat, which he had not put on at first; then, shielding his face with his arm, he sprang into the room through the window, calling to Bunty to stand outside.
[Illustration: "He sprang through the flames, the child close in his arms." The Family at Misrule. Page 271.]
Poppet, mad with terror, was still pulling at Mrs. Hassal, and the mosquito nets of the bed had just caught.
He pushed the child aside, and bade her go into the one safe corner. Then he enveloped Mrs. Hassal in the blanket, carried her across the room, and hastily put her through the window to Bunty.
Then he went back for the little girl,--Meg's little sister.
He took off his coat to wrap her in, as the other bedclothes had caught, but as he did so Bunty threw back the big blanket, and he used it instead.
The flames at the window were growing worse, but he sprang through them, the child close in his arms. When they took the blanket off her not a hair of her head was hurt.
One breathless second they looked at the burning room together from the safe vantage ground of the grass plot at the side.
Mrs. Hassal held his arm. "As if that matters," she answered indignantly.
"But there's something I rather prize in it," he said; "there's no danger,--see, I'll have the blanket this time."
He flung it round his head and shoulders, and went through the window again.
"Catch!" he cried, and threw the rough serge coat far out to them.
[Illustration: "THE BOY SEIZED HIM BY THE SHOULDERS AND DRAGGED HIM OUT THROUGH THE BLAZING GAP."]
They saw him in the burning window putting his arms up to dive out. But even as he did so there was a crash and fall--a great burning rafter had dropped from the ceiling.