Page:Wiggin--Marm Lisa.djvu/202

190 "No, ’tain’t no such thing; the manager’s across the bay; she gave the alarm herself."

"She didn’t know they was in there; I bet yer they’d run and hid, and she was hunting ’em when she seen the smoke."

"Yes, she did; she dropped the girl twin out of the second-story window into Abe Isaac’s arms, but she didn’t know the boy was in the building till just now, and they can’t hardly hold her.’

"She’s foolish, anyhow, ain’t she?"

Mary staggered beyond Rhoda to the front of the crowd.

"Let me under the rope!" she cried, with a mother’s very wail in her tone—"let me under the rope, for God’s sake! They’re my children!"

At this moment she heard a stentorian voice call to some one, "Wait a minute till the firemen get here, and they’ll go for him! Come back, girl, d-n you! you shan’t go!"

"Wait? No!  Not wait!" cried Lisa, tearing herself dexterously from the policeman’s clutches, and dashing like a whirlwind up the tottering stairway before any one else could gather presence of mind to seize and detain her.