hile it raged,
and it left a pitiful wreck; still, as Mrs. Parlin said, it was "not so
bad but it might have been worse." "Nothing," she always declared,
"ought to make us really unhappy except sin."

"And here we are, all alive," said she, with tearful eyes, as she tried
to put her arms around the three little girls at once. "All alive and
well! Let us thank God for that."

"I guess I shan't cry _much_ while I have my blessed mother to hold on
to," said Prudy, pressing her cheek against Mrs. Parlin's belt-slide.

"Nor I neither," spoke up Dotty, very bravely, till a sudden spasm of
recollection changed her tone, and she added, faintly, "If 'twasn't for
my cunning little tea-set!"

"I shouldn't care a single thing about the fire," sobbed Susy, "if it
hadn't burnt _our_ house up, you know. You see it was where we _lived_.
We had such good times in it, with the rooms as pleasant as you can
think! Nothing in the world ever happened: and now that pony! O, dear,
and my room where the sun rose! I don't know what's the matter with me,
but _seems_ as if I should die!"

"And me, too," sighed Dotty. "I just about know that man threw my
tea-set into the Back Cove; and now we haven't any home!"

"It is home where the heart is, children," said Mrs. Parlin, tenderly;
but something choked her voice as she spoke.

Though she was never known, either then or afterwards, to murmur, still
it is barely possible she may have felt the loss of her precious home as
much as even Susy did.

For the present the family were to remain at Mr. Eastman's; and it was
in the parlor chamber of that house that Mrs. Parlin and her three
children were standing, glad to find themselves together once more,
after the night of confusion.

Grandma Read, who was as patient as her daughter, "tried to gather into
stillness," and settle herself as soon as possible to her Bible. But the
change from the Sabbath-like quiet of her old room to the confusion of
this noisy dwelling must have tried her severely.

Mr. and Mrs. Eastman, and Mr. and Mrs. Parlin, were busy enough from
morning till night, day after day, searching for missing goods, and
aiding the sufferers from the fire. The Eastman mansion was left to the
tender mercies of the five children--the Parlins, and Florence, and
Johnny.

Master Percy would probably look insulted if he were to be classed among
the children. In his younger days he had had his share in ringing
people's door-bells and then ru