her appearance.

The first excitement was over, and now he had time in which to be
frightened.

"What can I do? Oh, what can I do?" he cried, running to and fro, and
then, hardly aware of his movements, he shouted loudly for Gladys.

"Don't waken her!" Aunt Hannah cried warningly. "If you can't help me
there is nothing she can do."

"Ain't she in the house?" Seth asked nervously.

He feared Aunt Hannah might die, and even though she was in no real
danger, to stand idly by not knowing how to aid her was terrible.

He failed to observe that Snip was no longer in the room; but just at
that moment his shrill barking was heard in an adjoining apartment,
and Seth knew the dog had gone to find his little playmate.

"You mustn't get frightened after the danger is all over, my dear,"
Aunt Hannah said soothingly. "But for you the house would have been
destroyed, and now we have nothing to fear."

"But you can't get up!" Seth wailed.

"That wouldn't be a great misfortune compared with losing our home,
even if I never got up again," the little woman said quietly. "But I'm
not going to lie here. Surely you can help me on to the couch."

"Tell me how to do it," Seth cried eagerly, and at that moment Gladys
appeared in the doorway.

"Lean over so that I may put my arms around your neck," Aunt Hannah
said, giving no heed to the girl's cry of alarm.

"She fell an' hurt herself," Seth said hurriedly to Gladys, as he
obeyed the little woman's injunction. And then, as the latter put her
uninjured arm over his neck, he tried to aid the movement by clasping
her waist.

"If you can help me just a little bit we'll soon have her on the
couch," he cried to Gladys, who by this time was standing at his side.

Aunt Hannah was a tiny woman, and the children, small though they
were, did not find it an exceedingly difficult task to raise her
bodily from the floor.

Then Gladys lighted a lamp, and it was seen that, in addition to the
injuries received by the fall, Aunt Hannah had been grievously burned.

"Yes, I'm in some pain," she said in reply to Seth's anxious
questioning; "but now that the house has been saved I have no right to
complain. Get some flour, Gladys, and while you are putting it on the
worst of the burns, perhaps Seth will run over to Mrs. Dean an' ask if
she can come here a few minutes."

"Where does Mis' Dean live?" the lad asked hurriedly, starting toward
the door; and he was already outside when Gladys replied