But meanwhile we at the house were having sensations. The doctor's first
question upon arrival had been:
"You've counted the children? You know they're all here?"
"We've made certain that every dormitory was empty before we left it," I
replied.
You see, they couldn't be counted in that confusion. Twenty or so of the
boys were still in the dormitories, working under Percy Witherspoon
to save clothing and furniture, and the older girls were sorting over
bushels of shoes and trying to fit them to the little ones, who were
running about underfoot and wailing dismally.
Well, after we had loaded and despatched about seven car loads of
children, the doctor suddenly called out:
"Where's Allegra?"
There was a horrified silence. No one had seen her. And then Miss Snaith
stood up and SHRIEKED. Betsy took her by the shoulders, and shook her
into coherence.
It seems that she had thought Allegra was coming down with a cough, and
in order to get her out of the cold, had moved her crib from the fresh
air nursery into the store room--and then forgotten it.
Well, my dear, you know where the store room is! We simply stared at one
another with white faces. By this time the whole east wing was gutted
and the third-floor stairs in flames. There didn't seem a chance that
the child was still alive. The doctor was the first to move. He snatched
up a wet blanket that was lying in a soppy pile on the floor of the
hall and sprang for the stairs. We yelled to him to come back. It simply
looked like suicide; but he kept on, and disappeared into the smoke. I
dashed outside and shouted to the firemen on the roof. The store room
window was too little for a man to go through, and they hadn't opened it
for fear of creating a draft.
I can't describe what happened in the next agonizing ten minutes. The
third-floor stairs fell in with a crash and a burst of flame about five
seconds after the doctor passed over them. We had given him up for lost
when a shout went up from the crowd on the lawn, and he appeared for an
instant at one of those dormer windows in the attic, and called for the
firemen to put up a ladder. Then he disappeared, and it seemed to us
that they'd never get that ladder in place; but they finally did, and
two men went up. The opening of the window had created a draft, and they
were almost overpowered by the volume of smoke that burst out at the
top. After an eternity the doctor appeared again with a white bundle in
his arms. He passed it out to the men, and then he staggered back and
dropped out of sight!