nto particulars. It
is sufficient to know that I was carried by a _man_ into the _street_ in
the face of some thousands of people, for I heard them cheering though I
saw them not. I know I shall never get over it--another cup, my love;
not _quite_ so much sugar--no, not if I were to live to the age of
Methusaleh."

"I don't wonder, indeed I don't," murmured the sympathetic Miss Tippet.
"I think, Julia dear, you are a little too hard on Mrs Denman. How
would _you_ like to have been carried out of a burning house in such a
way by a big rough man?"

"Oh, my dear," interposed Mrs Denman, "I did not say he was rough. Big
he certainly was, and strong, but I must do him the justice to say that
the man li--lif--oh me! lifted me up very tenderly, and carried me as
though I had been an infant and he my mother, through smoke and fire and
water, into the street, before the eyes of the--whole--oh, it's too
awful to think of!"

"Stuff!" ejaculated Miss Deemas, pecking a piece of cake out of her
fingers as she would, metaphorically of course, have pecked the eyes out
of the head of Frank Willders, or any other man. "Didn't you say he put
a blanket round you?"

"Of course, Miss Deemas; I should have died otherwise of pure shame."

"No, you wouldn't," retorted the Eagle. "You would probably have been
half suffocated and a good deal dirtied, and you might have been singed,
but you wouldn't have died; and what need you care now, for the people
saw nothing but a bundle. You might have been a bundle of old clothes
for all they knew or cared. All they wanted to see was the bravery, as
they call it, of the man; as if there were not hundreds upon hundreds of
women who would do the same thing if their muscles were strong enough,
and occasion served."

"But it _was_ a brave act, you know," said Miss Tippet timidly.

"I don't know that," retorted Miss Deemas, helping herself to more cake
with as much decision of manner as if she had been carrying it off by
force of arms from before the very muzzles of a masculine battery. "I
don't know that. He had to escape, you know, for his own life, and he
might as well bring a bundle along with him as not."

"Yes; but then," said Miss Tippet, "he first went up the--the thingumy,
you know."

"No, he didn't," retorted Miss Deemas smartly; "he was in the house at
the time, and only came down the `thingumy,' as you call it!"

It was a peculiarity of Miss Deemas's character, that she claimed