the shack must be kept
going all day to make the rooms warm enough for Sally. She was
creeping now, and during the long hours when the grown folks were
working and the older children at school, she had to stay in a
chair with a gate across the front which her father had fixed out
of an old kitchen armchair. Grandma cushioned it with rags, but
it grew hard and tiresome, and sometimes Jimmie could not keep
her contented there.

One day Sally cried until he wriggled her out of her nest and
spread a quilt for her in a corner of the room as Grandma did.
There he sat, fencing her in with his legs while he drew pictures
of oyster-houses. He was so busy drawing roofs that he had
forgot all about Sally until he was startled by her scream. He
jerked around in terror. Sally had clambered over the fence of
his legs and crept under the stove after her ball. Perhaps a
spark had snapped through the half-open slide in the stove door;
however it had happened, the flames were running up her little
cotton dress.

Poor Baby Sally! Jimmie had never felt so helpless. Hardly
knowing why he did it, he dragged the wool quilt off Grandma's
bed and scooted across the floor in a flash. While Sally
screamed with fright, he wrapped the thick folds tightly around
her and hugged her close.

[Illustration: Jimmie saving Sally]

When the grown folks came from work, just ahead of the school
children, they found Jimmie and Sally white and shaky but safe.
The woolen quilt had smothered out the flames before Sally was
hurt at all; and Jimmie had only a pair of blistered hands.

"If I hadn't put a wool petticoat on her, and wool stockings,"
Grandma kept saying, while she sat and rocked the whimpering
baby. "And if our Jimmie hadn't been so smart as to think of the
bedclothes. . . .

"Not all children have been so lucky," Daddy said in a
shaky voice, crouching beside Grandma and touching Sally's downy
head.

"But I hadn't ought to have left her with poor Jimmie,"
Grandma mourned. "If only they had a Center, like at the bogs. I
don't believe I can bear it to stay here any longer after this.
Maybe we best go back to the city and put them in a Home."

Daddy objected. "We'll not leave the kids alone again, of
course; but we're making a fair living and the Boss says there'll
be work through April, and then Pa and I can go out and plant
seed oysters if we want."

"Where's the good of a fair living if it's the death of you?"
Grandma's