amp. He wondered vaguely if she were
more elaborately dressed than usual, or if the festal impression she
produced were simply a reflection of her mood.

"I do want to see the Dillons--how did you guess?" she rejoined; and
Amherst felt a sudden impulse to reply: "For the same reason that made
you think of them."

The fact of her remembering the Dillons made him absurdly happy; it
re-established between them the mental communion that had been checked
by his thoughts of the previous day.

"I suppose I'm rather self-conscious about the Dillons, because they're
one of my object lessons--they illustrate the text," he said laughing,
as they went down the steps.

Westmore had been given a half-holiday for the opening of the hospital,
and as Amherst and Justine turned into the street, parties of workers
were dispersing toward their houses. They were still a dull-eyed stunted
throng, to whom air and movement seemed to have been too long denied;
but there was more animation in the groups, more light in individual
faces; many of the younger men returned Amherst's good-day with a look
of friendliness, and the women to whom he spoke met him with a
volubility that showed the habit of frequent intercourse.

"How much you have done!" Justine exclaimed, as he rejoined her after
one of these asides; but the next moment he saw a shade of embarrassment
cross her face, as though she feared to have suggested comparisons she
had meant to avoid.

He answered quite naturally: "Yes--I'm beginning to see my way now; and
it's wonderful how they respond--" and they walked on without a shadow
of constraint between them, while he described to her what was already
done, and what direction his projected experiments were taking.

The Dillons had been placed in charge of one of the old factory
tenements, now transformed into a lodging-house for unmarried
operatives. Even its harsh brick exterior, hung with creepers and
brightened by flower-borders, had taken on a friendly air; and indoors
it had a clean sunny kitchen, a big dining-room with cheerful-coloured
walls, and a room where the men could lounge and smoke about a table
covered with papers.

The creation of these model lodging-houses had always been a favourite
scheme of Amherst's, and the Dillons, incapacitated for factory work,
had shown themselves admirably adapted to their new duties. In Mrs.
Dillon's small hot sitting-room, among the starched sofa-tidies and pink
shells that testifie