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Rh ings and conjectures, its rushing of small boys in all directions, its tread of hurrying policemen, its hasty flinging up of windows and grouping of heads therein.

The girls were too busy labeling the children’s gifts to listen attentively to the confused clamor in the streets,—fires were common enough in a city built of wood; but when, half an hour after the first and second alarms, a third sounded, they concluded it must be a conflagration, and Rhoda, dropping her nuts and cornucopias, ran to the corner for news. She was back again almost immediately, excited and breathless.

"Oh, Mary!" she exclaimed, her hand on her panting side, "unless they are mistaken, it is three separate fires: one, a livery-stable and carriage-house out towards Lone Mountain; another fearful one on Telegraph Hill—a whole block of houses, and they haven’t had enough help there because of the Lone Mountain fire; now there’s a third alarm, and they say it’s at the corner of Sixth and Dutch streets. If it is, we have a tenement house next door; isn’t that clothing-place on the corner?  Yes, I know it is; make haste!  Edith and Helen will watch the Christmas things."