"Quick!" shouted Cora, "we can get the buckets. Bess take that one,"

pointing to the pail that hung on the wall, and which was filled with water. "Belle, run around and find another! Regina is with the injured men, so we cannot have her, but there is a girl! Won't you please get a bucket from the hall?" this to a very much frightened young lady. "The fire extinguishers seem to be all emptied, and the men are beating back the flames from the stairway."

In a remarkably short time more than a dozen frightened girls and women had formed a bucket brigade under Cora's direction, and as fast as they could get the pails they handed them, filled and again refilled, to the boys, who were now doing all in their power to keep the fire from spreading to the dining-room floor.

"What happened?" demanded one woman, when Jack turned to take a pail of water from Cora.

"Lightning struck the boiler," replied the young man.

"Oh, mercy!" exclaimed the same unreasonable person, who was delaying the men with her questions. "Any one hurt?"

"Yes, three," and Jack, his shirt sleeves rolled up, and looking like the earnest worker he was, dashed again down a step into the dense smoke to splash the pail of water on the smouldering but now well-wetted woodwork.

It seemed then as if all the guests but our own friends had run out of the building, and were huddled on the porch or standing in the rain under the trees along the path.

Ed and Walter had carried the cook and the dishwasher out from the kitchen immediately after the explosion of the boiler, and the other injured ones were in the little cottage adjoining the hotel, where Miss Robbins was binding up their burns and making good use of her skill and the materials that she carried in her emergency case.

"But I am afraid this man is very dangerously injured," she told Ed.

"A piece of the boiler struck him directly on the back of the head."

"Should he go to the hospital?" asked the young man.

"Without question, if he could. But this is so far from anything like a hospital."

"We could take him to Waterbury in Cora's car," suggested Ed. "That is large enough to make him somewhat easy."

"The very thing! But I could not go with him. This other man is suffering so," and she poured more oil on the face that had not yet been bandaged in cotton.

"Cora could run the machine, and I could hold Jim--they say his name is Jim."

"Poor Jim!" sighed the young lady doctor. "He has a very slight chance. See, he is unconscious!"

Ed rushed out, and in a short time had the _Whirlwind_ at the door.

Jack and Walter were still busy with the fire, but they stopped when he called them, and together all three carried Jim tenderly out, and when Ed got in first they put the man in his arms. Cora also had been summoned, and without as much as waiting for her cap, but, getting into the cloak that Bess threw from the hall rack, she cranked up, and was at the wheel, following the directions for the nearest way to a hospital in Waterbury.

"It is his only chance," remarked Miss Robbins, when she heard some one say the jolting of the auto would kill him outright, "and both the car and its chauffeur can be depended upon."

CHAPTER XI

THE RESULT OF A BLAZE

"That was plucky, Cora."

"What, Ed?"

"You running into Waterbury with a man who might have died in your car."

"Then he would have died in your arms."

"But I thought girls were so queer about things of that sort. When one dies in a house, for instance, a girl never likes the room----"

"But you would have had to keep your arms. Ed, I think the pluck was all on your side. But I do hope Jim has a chance. He seems an awfully frail little fellow."

"Weighs about as much as you do, I should judge. But they say that kind of build is the best for fighting disease--there is not so much blood to take up the poison."

They were riding back to Restover. Ed insisted upon driving the car, although Cora declared that she was not the least tired. The trip to the hospital had been made at a very high rate of speed, as the unconscious man seemed in imminent danger, and Cora's hands now trembled visibly from their work at the wheel of the _Whirlwind_.

"I suppose we will have to live on love tonight," remarked Ed, "for that kitchen is certainly a thing of the past."

"What saved the second floor?"

"The heavy beams and metal ceiling. I guess they have had fires before in that hotel, for the ceiling was practically of iron. I just wonder what the boys are doing about now. I fancy Walter has turned nurse to a.s.sist Miss Robbins."

"And Jack has taken up the role of engineer--to be made chief of the fire department. I shouldn't wonder but what they had formally organized by this time."

"He certainly deserves to be chief; he did good work. When a gas tank--a small affair--started to hiss in the servants' dining room, Jack grabbed up a big palm and dumped the contents of the flower pot into the tank. It was a small thing they heated coffee on, and when, the next moment, the tank broke it was surprised to find itself buried under a bed of sand, with flowers on the grave."

Cora laughed heartily at Ed's telling of the incident. Certainly strange things, if not really funny things, always seem to occur during the excitement caused by fire.

"If everything in the kitchen is gone, don't you think we had better bring back some refreshments?" asked Cora. "The folks will all have appet.i.tes when they find there is nothing to eat."

"Great idea. Here is a good-looking store. Let's load up."

"But is there no manager at the hotel? Who was or who is boss?"

"Jim. The management of that sort of place goes into the shape of bills and accounts, settled every month. Some New York company owns the place. It was a failure, and they leased it to a local man.

That's why there will be no one to look after things now."

"Well, we will buy the food and send our bill in to the company. I guess they will be glad enough to pay it when they hear of the emergency."

"Yes, it would not do for the hotel disaster to get into the New York papers, with a starved-to-death head. Well, here's our store. What shall we buy?"

Cora and Ed left the car and went into the store. They bought all sorts of canned goods, although Cora declared they would have to be eaten raw. Then they bought bacon and eggs. Ed insisted on that, no matter, he said, if they had to come to town again and take back to Restover a gas stove. He insisted that no well-regulated emergency feed ever went without bacon and eggs. Bread and b.u.t.ter they procured for fifty persons. Some cake for the ladies, Ed suggested. Pork and beans, canned, Cora thought might do for breakfast, even if they had to be eaten from the cans. Then the last thought, and by no means the most trifling, was wooden plates and tin cups. The bill footed up to ten dollars, and Ed insisted that the man make out the bill as paid and marked for the Restover Hotel.

A half hour later the _Whirlwind_ drew up to the hostelry.

The rain had ceased, and the hotel patrons were almost all out of doors, so that the motor girls and boys trooped down to meet Ed and Cora.

As was antic.i.p.ated, hunger prevailed, and when it was found that stores of eatables were in the tonneau of the _Whirlwind_ even the most helpless, nervous ladies at the hotel wanted to help get the refreshments into the house.

"But where can they be cooked?"

"What can we cook on?"

"There is no gas stove!"

"Not even an oil stove!"

"We can't eat bacon raw!"