“misses dale and travers, late for supper,” said the sharp voice of miss olaine. “your excuses, please?”

this was the chums’ welcome as they entered the big entrance hall of glenwood school after dark.

“oh, miss olaine! the train was late, and we stopped on the way to——”

“that will do, miss travers,” said the teacher. “other girls who came on that train were here ten minutes ago.”

“but they ran their legs off,” sniffed tavia, when the teacher broke in with:

“and you took your time, of course, octavia. ten lines extra—latin—tuesday morning. i will point out which lines monday. that is all.”

tavia flared up and was evidently about to make the matter worse. but dorothy pinched her, and pinched hard.

“you remember what we agreed coming over124 from the train,” she warned. “swallow it like a man!”

“oh—oh!” gasped tavia. “she does make me so mad, doro.”

“you wouldn’t have got the condition if you had kept still. that tongue of yours, tavia, is like what mrs. hogan accused celia of having: it’s hung in the middle and wags at both ends.”

“well! it’s not fair!” grumbled her school chum.

“of course not; but we agreed, fair or not, to bear with miss olaine—and to urge the other girls to bear with her. when she sits and wrings her hands and bites her lips so, we know what she is thinking of; don’t we?”

“oh, yes!” admitted tavia, with a shudder. “i know she is to be pitied. but it is dreadful hard to be picked upon the way she picks upon me——”

“now, you know that’s nonsense,” replied dorothy, sensibly. “if you would not answer back and give her an excuse for punishing you, you’d not be in trouble. she gave me no condition.”

“oh, that’s your luck, that’s all,” sighed tavia.

“you know that’s not so,” replied dorothy, mildly. “do be careful, tavia. and let us tell the other girls and get them to try to be kind to miss olaine. i am very sorry for her.”

“well—i s’pose—of course i am, too!” exclaimed125 the really warm-hearted tavia. “but she does get my ‘mad up’ so easy!”

“you get mad without much provocation, it seems to me. now, after church service to-morrow, let’s get the girls all in our room—our crowd, i mean—and tell them about the rector street school fire.”

“all right. the poor thing——”

“miss olaine?”

“of course,” said tavia. “the poor thing must be always remembering about the little kiddies, and how she came near to forgetting them——”

“and if it hadn’t been for the man on the steel beam outside——”

“of course, that was your tom moran,” said tavia.

“celia’s tom moran,” corrected dorothy.

but, never mind the further discussion of the matter between the two friends. the following is what dorothy had copied out of the file of the courier, and she read it to the other girls the next day, as proposed:

“the burning of that fire-trap, the rector street school, long since condemned by everybody but the board of education, could scarcely have been regrettable had it not been for the several terrifying incidents connected with it. some of the126 hairbreadth escapes were related in yesterday’s courier; but the details of that incident which was most perilous—the salvation of the seven little girls and the teacher left to perish on the upper floor of the schoolhouse—were not known when we went to press last evening.

“although our fire department boys did their duty at every point, the spectacular rescue of these seven children and the teacher was accomplished by men at work upon the steel structure of the new adrian building, which was going up directly beside the burned schoolhouse.

“at the height of the fire the teacher and her charges were discovered at the window of a small room on the top floor, by a workman on a steel girder that was being raised by the steam winch to its place in the structure. the girder was twenty feet long and the man—by the name of moran—was riding the beam when the fire broke out.

“he called to some helpers, and signalled the engineer below how he wished the girder handled. with a cable they swung the end of the heavy piece of steel so that its end rested on the sill of the window of the room where the teacher and her charges were trapped. the other end of the girder rested in the framework of the new building.

“then the teacher, rebecca olaine, of 127 morrell street, this city, opened the lower sash and got out on the broad window sill. she was able to127 lift and pass to moran each of the children, and he ran back along the narrow bridge and handed them to other men waiting beyond.

“miss olaine seemed to lose her strength when the last child was saved, and she could not walk the girder with the workman’s help. fire had burst into the room then, and the smoke was so thick that just what occurred at the window could not well be seen from the ground.

“but in trying to drag the teacher forth, moran seemed to lose his footing, and fell back into the room. two other workmen seized the teacher and carried her, insensible, to safety.

“by that time members of hose company number 7 reached the steel bridge and took upon themselves the rescue of the workman. he was pulled out of the fire somewhat scorched; but inquiry at the hospital this afternoon failed to discover his whereabouts. he had had his burns dressed, and had left the hospital early in the day.

“our reporter could learn nothing at 127 morrell street regarding the condition of miss olaine, save that the doctor had forbidden her seeing anybody at present. none of the children saved with her was even scorched.”

“well!” gasped nita brent. “whatever do you think about that? is it sure-to-goodness our olaine?”

128 “our own dear, timid, sweet miss olaine,” drawled tavia who—although she agreed with dorothy that the terrible adventure through which miss olaine had passed, should be considered as a reason for the teacher’s unfortunate manner and disposition—could not so freely forgive her as did dorothy.

“the poor thing!” murmured cologne.

“i don’t know!” blurted out ned ebony, shaking her head. “what’s it all for, doro?”

“i think we ought to pity her and—and take her scoldings with a wee hit of patience,” said dorothy, quietly. “she must have been greatly shaken up by the fire——”

“so she wants to shake us down,” observed tavia, “to pay up for it.”

“it made her nervous and irritable,” said dorothy, with a look at her chum. “she is more to be pitied——”

“than censured,” groaned the irrepressible tavia. “all right, doro! i’ll agree to play no more tricks on her.”

“you’d better decide on that,” grumbled ned. “otherwise you will not graduate from old glenwood with flying colors.”

“let’s all ‘be easy’ on miss olaine,” said dorothy, calmly. “i understand that miss olaine was not fit to teach for a year after the fire, and that the reason she came to glenwood is because it129 made her nervous to teach in a big, crowded city school again. i got that much out of miss pangborn this morning after prayers.

“of course, if doro says we must treat her nicely, we must,” said nita. “but she—she’s just an old bear!”

“who dares call my doro a bear?” demanded tavia. “there will at once be trouble bruin.”

“now, you know very well i meant olaine,” complained nita.

“she’s just horrid,” added molly richards. “she’s given me conditions—just for nothing—too!”

“don’t weep about it, dicky,” advised tavia. “i claim to have the greatest record for receiving extras without cause since the beginning of miss olaine’s reign.”

“anyhow,” said cologne, “if dorothy says we ought to excuse her, and try and treat her nicely——”

“don’t put it that way,” urged dorothy. “don’t you all think she is to be excused?”

“well, wasn’t anybody else ever in a fire?” began ned ebony, hotly.

“think of shagbark, myshirt, and abedwego!” exclaimed tavia. “weren’t they the three worthies who went into the fiery furnace?”

“but i hope they didn’t teach school afterward,130 if it made ’em as cross as miss olaine,” sighed cologne, as she arranged her hair before the glass.

it was agreed, however, that the graduating class of glenwood was to be particularly nice to miss olaine for the rest of the school year.

“we’ll just heap coals of fire on her head,” said nita.

“hope it’ll singe her hair, then,” sniffed tavia.

when the others were gone, she and dorothy discussed the other—and more interesting—detail of the rector street school fire. the other girls had been told nothing about celia and tom moran.

“where do you suppose he went after that fire?” queried dorothy, sitting on the edge of the bed with her chin in the cup of her hand.

“tom moran?”

“of course.”

“the paper said, several days later, you know, that he had left town. people had looked him up. the parents of the children who were saved with the teacher wanted to make up a purse for him.”

“and this card,” said dorothy, reflectively, taking the postal card from her pocket, “says that the union knows nothing about him. he disappeared after that fire—and he was a regular hero!”

131 “sure he was,” agreed tavia. “maybe he was such a modest one that he ran away.”

but dorothy was not listening to her jokes. she murmured, thoughtfully:

“i wonder if miss olaine knows what became of tom moran?”