e ourselves?" added Margaret, seating herself on
the couch at Rita's feet. "I think we must tell stories; it is a perfect
day for stories. Oh, Peggy, don't you want to get my knitting, like the
dear good child you are? I cannot listen well unless I have my
knitting."

Peggy brought the great pink and gray blanket which had been Margaret's
friend and companion for several months, and with it her own diminutive
piece of work, a doily that she was supposed to be embroidering. Rita
lay watching them with bright eyes, her eyebrows still nearer together
than was desirable. At last, "Well," she said again. There was
impatience and irritation in the tone, but there was interest, too.

"Well," replied Margaret, "I was only thinking what would be pleasantest
to do; there are so many things. How would it do for each of us to tell
a story,--a heroic story, such as will stand the rain, and not be afraid
of a wetting?"

"Of our own deeds?" inquired Rita.

"Oh, perhaps hardly that. If I waited to find a heroic deed of my own
performance, you might get tired, my dear. Somehow heroics do not come
every day, as they used in story times. But I can tell you one of my
father. Will you hear it?"

Rita nodded languidly; Peggy looked up eagerly.

"It was in the great Blankton fire," said Margaret. "I don't suppose
you know about it, Rita, but Peggy may have heard. No? Well, the country
is very big, after all. It seems as if all the world must have heard of
that fire. I was hardly more than a baby at the time, but I remember
seeing the red glare, and thinking that we were not going to have any
night that time, as the sun was getting up again as soon as he had gone
to bed. We were living in Blankton that winter, for papa had some work
that made it necessary for him to be near the Blankton libraries;
Historical Society work, you know, as so much of his work was." She
paused for some appreciative word, but none came. Apparently neither of
her cousins had heard of the Historical Society, which had played so
large a part in her father's life and her own.

"The whole sky was like blood!" she went on; "and when the smoke-clouds
that hung low over the city blew aside, we could see the flames darting
up, high, high, like pillars and spires. Oh! it was a beautiful,
dreadful sight! I watched it, baby as I was, with delight. I never
thought that my own father was in all that terrible glow and furnace,
and that he came near losing his precious life