They asked their more immediate protector questions as to the
progress of the fire, which he answered curtly, as befitted his office.
CHAPTER VI
I
MRS. ABBOTT entered Alexina's room and caught her hanging out of the
window. She had motored up to the city during the afternoon, and, after
a vain attempt to persuade her mother to go down at once to Alta, had
concluded to remain over night. The spectacle was the most horrifyingly
interesting she had ever witnessed in her temperate life, and her
self-denying Aunt Clara was in charge of the children. Her husband had
driven himself to town as soon as he heard of the fire and been sworn in a
member of the Committee of Fifty.
"Darling," she said firmly to the sister who was little older than
her first-born, "I want to have a talk with you. Come into papa's old
dressing-room. I had a cot put there, and as there is no room for another I
am quite alone."
Alexina followed with lagging feet. She had always given her elder sister
the same surface obedience that she gave her mother. It "saved trouble."
But life had changed so since morning that she was in no mood to keep
up the role of "little sister," sweet and malleable and innocent as a
Ballinger-Groome at the age of eighteen should be.
II
She dropped on the floor and embraced her knees with her arms. Mrs. Abbott
seated herself in as dignified an attitude as was possible on the edge of
the cot.
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