She sighed resignedly and dropped her eyes again so that her lashes hung antennæ-like against the light. Miss Minton, whose heavy face and rather congested eyes had been turned toward her while she spoke, now looked anxiously to Doctor Strike to see what the effect was on him. But he made no comment, he was not looking at any of them, and Megan felt that he was trying over in his mind the various possibilities left open to them. She wondered what they would do now. The little back parlor suggested to her vaguely a room where she had gone to Sunday-school as a child, and it seemed, by association of ideas, safe. But she was afraid to dwell on ideas of safety and security lest they should weaken her. She stared at a cross-stitch camel embroidered on the table cover and turned her thoughts to schoolboy stories of journeys across the Gobi and wild Mongol raids. "How long would it take you to get the children ready?" asked the Doctor. "They are in the next room," said Miss Reed, "sleeping in their clothes." "Then you had better wake them up and we will start at once." Miss Minton looked hastily from the Doctor back to Miss Reed and she began to breathe asthmatically again. "Why, Doctor," exclaimed Miss Reed softly, "you don't think of our starting out now on foot, do you?" Miss Minton looked around with an expression almost of triumph, as if Miss Reed's obstinacy were a source of satisfaction and even pride to her. "I certainly do. I insist on it. We are actually only a short distance from Range Road. The streets are as empty now as they ever will be. In one hour, in half an hour, they will begin to fill again. It is unfortunate that the guard promised me did not come and still more unfortunate I lost the car, but you cannot stay here." Miss Reed, who had been assiduously making designs on the table cover with her pencil, lifted her eyes to Doctor Strike, and Megan was startled to observe under the long pale lashes the fixed idolatrous gaze of a schoolgirl. "I don't feel it would be wise to leave," she said gently. "I feel if we stay here with our guard we are comparatively safe, but if we start out, even if we are allowed to leave the house, we will be attacked before we reach the barricade." Doctor Strike let his quicksilver eyes flicker angrily over her for a moment. "I don't understand you," he cried. "Do you really suppose Miss Davis and I came here to shut ourselves up in your orphanage, where the best we can hope for is to cower under cover until some one else comes to take us out?" "I am sorry about Miss Davis. I did not ask any of you to come, though I appreciate your devotion in doing so. But I am responsible to God for the safety of these children and Miss Minton. I don't feel it would be wise to expose them in the streets now." "You prefer to keep them here and be burned out, hit by a shell, or butchered by the mob?" "I don't believe we would even be allowed to leave."