"Well, what of it? LET IT BURN! We won't hurt you, if you go in
the house and stay there!"
She turned and glanced up at the court-house. Already flames
were issuing from it. "Go in the house and let it burn, INDEED!"
thought she. "He knows me, don't he? Oh, sir! for the love of
Heaven won't you stop it?" she said, entreatingly.
"Run in the house, good mother. That is a wise woman," he
advised.
Down in her heart, and as the very outcome of lip and brain she
wanted to say, "You needn't 'mother' me, you murderous rascal!"
but, remembering everything that was at stake, she crushed her
wrath and buttoned it in as closely as she had Uncle John behind
the door in the morning, and again, with swift gentleness, laid
her hand on his arm.
He turned and looked at her. Vexed at her persistence, and
extremely annoyed at intelligence that had just reached him from
the North Bridge, he said, imperiously, "Get away! or you'll be
trodden down by the horses!"
"I CAN'T go!" she cried, clasping his arm, and fairly clinging to
it in her frenzy of excitement. "Oh stop the fire, quick, quick!
or my house will burn!"
"I have no time to put out your fires," he said, carelessly,
shaking loose from her hold and turning to meet a messenger with
news.
Poor little woman! What could she do? The wind was rising, and
the fire grew. Flame was creeping out in a little blue curl in a
new place, under the rafter's edge, AND NOBODY CARED. That was
what increased the pressing misery of it all.
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