Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. The morning dawned, bright and fresh, over the habitations of an indignant, suffering town. There had been no fire, nothing except a slight alarm behind the scenes, which a bucket of water and a little common sense might have stopped at once. Happily no great loss of life had occurred; but many serious injuries had been the result of that fearful rush, that senseless panic: and a panic, it was well observed, often brings far more mischief in its train than the most foolhardy want of caution. There was, however, one good result' abundance of themes for talk for days. Every one blamed some one. The gentlemen blamed the ladies for their insisting on going out. The ladies thought the gentlemen ought to have jumped on the stage and ascertained the cause of the alarm. Every father of a family in Brighton, it is said, blamed his wife; and no one more freely or unjustly than Archdeacon Selby. He, of course, censured Lady Caroline extremely for giving his boys those pleasures which he never thought of for them; whilst she gently recriminated by hoping that he would go with them himself another time. The little boy was in extreme danger. His knee had been crushed. It was feared he would be lame for life. Irritative fever came on, and the unhappy mother, and scarcely less wretched nurse, watched over him night and day, whilstthe Archdeacon talked the matter out in the reading-room. Then it was reported that the young lady who had tried to escape with the child, was also dying. But this rumour was, happily unfounded. Rosamond was, indeed, extremely ill. She was bruised, affrighted, and shaken ?but a week of her mother's care, and medical skill, precluded all fear of danger to her. The danger that arose out of this accident was to Ada?for Mr. Thornley became a co...