Safe, aye, why not? You ve no business here. Here, here s Sampson, he ll take you home. I ve enough to bother me; there s my own place to watch. Go home now, I can t do with you here.
Have you seen Will?she asked.
Go home?aSampson, just take Miss Lois home?anow!
You don t really know where he is?afather?
Go home now?aI don t want you here?aher father ordered peremptorily.
The tears sprang to Lois eyes. She looked at the fire and the tears were quickly dried by fear. The flames roared and struggled upward. The great wonder of the fire made her forget even her indignation at her father s light treatment of herself and of her lover. There was a crashing and bursting of timber, as the first floor fell in a mass into the blazing gulf, splashing the fire in all directions, to the terror of the crowd. She saw the steel of the machines growing white-hot and twisting like flaming letters. Piece after piece of the flooring gave way, and the machines dropped in red ruin as the wooden framework burned out. The air became unbreathable; the fog was swallowed up; sparks went rushing up as if they would burn the dark heavens; sometimes cards of lace went whirling into the gulf of the sky, waving with wings of fire. It was dangerous to stand near this great cup of roaring destruction.
Sampson, the grey old manager of Buxton and Co. s, led her away as soon as she would turn her face to listen to him. He was a stout, irritable man. He elbowed his way roughly through the crowd, and Lois followed him, her head high, her lips closed. He led her for some distance without speaking, then at last, unable to contain his garrulous irritability, he broke out:
What do they expect? What can they expect? They can t expect to stand a bad time. They spring up like mushrooms as big as a house-side, but there s no stability in em. I remember William Selby when he d run on my errands. Yes, there s some as can make much out of little, and there s some as can make much out of nothing, but they find it won t last. William Selby s sprung up in a day, and he ll vanish in a night. You can t trust to luck alone. Maybe he thinks it s a lucky thing this fire has come when things are looking black. But you can t get out of it as easy as that. There s been a few too many of em. No, indeed, a fire s the last thing I should hope to come to?athe very last!
Lois hurried and hurried, so that she brought the old manager panting in distress up the steps of her home. She could not bear to hear him talking so. They could get no one to open the door for some time. When at last Lois ran upstairs, she found her mother dressed, but all unbuttoned again, lying back in the chair in her daughter s room, suffering from palpitation of the heart, with Sesame and Lilies crushed beneath her. Lois administered brandy, and her decisive words and movements helped largely to bring the good lady to a state of recovery sufficient to allow of her returning to her own bedroom.
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