rnden's Hotel last July? Why, it was the sensation of the
season. There was over a column about it in the _Manchester Guardian_.
Everybody talked of it for weeks.... And no one ever told you that we
were in it? Half the annexe was burnt down. We were in the annexe, all
four of us. I fancy the Smiths had chosen it because the rooms in the
annexe are larger. Have you ever been in a fire?... Well, thank your
stars! We were wakened up at three o'clock. It was getting light, even.
Somehow that made it worse. The confusion--you can't imagine it. We got
out all right. Oh! there was no special danger to life and limb. But
after all we only _did_ get out just in time. And with practically
nothing but our dressing-gowns--some not even that! It's queer, in a
fire, how at first you try to save things, and keep calm, and pretend
you _are_ calm, until the thing gets hold of you. I actually began to
shovel clothes into my trunks. Somebody said we should have time for
that. Well--we hadn't. And it was a very good thing there wasn't a lift
in the annexe. It seems a lift well acts like a chimney, and half of us
might have been burnt alive.

I must say the fire-brigade was pretty good. They got the fire out very
well--very quickly in fact. We women, or most of us, had been bundled
into private parlours and things in the main part of the hotel, which
wasn't threatened, and when we knew that the fire was out we naturally
wanted to go back and see whether any of our things could be saved out
of the wreck.

Oh! what a sight it was! What a sight it was! You'd never believe that
so much damage could be done in an hour or so. Chiefly by water, of
course. All the ground floor was swimming in water. In fact there was a
river of it running across the promenade into the sea. About five-sixths
of Llandudno, dressed nohow, was on the promenade. However, policemen
kept the people outside the gates.

The firemen began bringing trunks down the stairs; they wouldn't let us
go up at first. It really was a wonderful scene, at the foot of the
stairs, lots of us paddling about in that lake, and perfectly lost to
all sense of--what shall I say?--well, correctness. I do believe most of
us had forgotten all about civilization. We wanted our things. We wanted
our things so badly that we even lost our interest in the origin of the
fire and in the question whether we should get anything out of the
insurance company. By the way, I mustn't omit to tell you that we