In her mother’s little well-worn Bible—­one of her few treasures—­Cynthia had seen this verse heavily underscored:  “Take therefore no thought for the morrow:  for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.”  She did not know what it meant.  She would know some day.

I cannot tell you about the supper, so delicious with its flavor of all that was sweet and fine, and the open-air appetite the children brought to it.

After supper came the fireworks.  They were simply bewildering.  Lulu, the staunch little friend who had gone to Cynthia’s in the morning, speedily found her out, and was in a whirl of joy that she was there.

“How did you get away?” she whispered.

“Oh, Mrs. Dean came after me herself,” returned Cynthia, “And Aunt Kate couldn’t say no to her.”

Lulu gave Cynthia’s hand a squeeze of sympathy.

“What made you bring your mamma’s shawl?” asked Cynthia, as she noticed that Lulu was encumbered with a plaid shawl of the heaviest woolen, which she kept on her arm.

“Malaria,” returned the child.  “Mamma’s so afraid of it and she said if I felt the teentiest bit of a chill I must wrap myself up.  Horrid old thing!  I hate to lug it around with me.  S’pose we sit on it, Cynthy.”

They arranged it on the settee, and complacently seated themselves to enjoy the rockets, which soared in red and violet and silvery stars to the sky, then fell suddenly down and went out like lamps in a puff of wind.

Suddenly there was a stir, a shriek, a chorus of screams following it, from the group just around the fireworks.  A pinwheel had exploded, sending a shower of sparks in every direction.

All in a second, Florrie Dean flew past the girls, her white fluffy dress on fire.  And quick as the fire itself, Cynthia tore after her.  Well was it that the shabby green delaine was a woolen dress, that the stout shoes did not encumber the nimble feet, that the child’s faculties were so alert.  In a second she had seized the great shawl, and almost before any of the grown people had realized the child’s peril, had smothered the flames by winding the thick folds over and over, round and round, the fleecy dress and the frightened child.

Florrie was only slightly burned, but Cynthia’s little hands were so blistered that they would neither wash dishes nor pick beans for many a day.

Mrs. Dean bathed them in sweet oil and bandaged them from the air, then put Cynthia to bed on a couch in a chamber opening out of her own room.  From time to time in the night she went to see if the dear child was sleeping quietly, and Mr. Dean, standing and looking at her, said, “We owe this little one a great debt; her presence of mind saved Florrie’s life.”

Early the next morning Bonny Bess trotted up to Mr. Mason’s door without Cynthia.  Aunt Kate was feeling impatient for her return.  She missed the willing little helper more than she had supposed possible.  She had arranged half a dozen tasks for the day, in everyone of which she expected to employ Cynthia, and she felt quite disappointed when she saw that Mr. Dean was alone.