les--that isn't
much in an automobile, and the roads are good now."

"Well, the risk isn't much greater, if you have a closed car, and she
would, of course, be better looked after," the physician consented.

"I'll see to it at once," said Insall....

CHAPTER XX

The Martha Wootton Memorial Hospital was the hobby of an angel alumnus of
Silliston. It was situated in Hovey's Lane, but from the window of the
white-enameled room in which she lay Janet could see the bare branches of
the Common elms quivering to the spring gusts, could watch, day by day,
the grass changing from yellow-brown to vivid green in the white
sunlight. In the morning, when the nurse opened the blinds, that sunlight
swept radiantly into the room, lavish with its caresses; always spending,
always giving, the symbol of a loving care that had been poured out on
her, unasked and unsought. It was sweet to rest, to sleep. And instead of
the stringent monster-cry of the siren, of the discordant clamour of the
mill bells, it was sweet yet strange to be awakened by silvertoned chimes
proclaiming peaceful hours. At first she surrendered to the spell, and
had no thought of the future. For a little while every day, Mrs. Maturin
read aloud, usually from books of poetry. And knowing many of the verses
by heart, she would watch Janet's face, framed in the soft dark hair that
fell in two long plaits over her shoulders. For Janet little guessed the
thought that went into the choosing of these books, nor could she know of
the hours spent by this lady pondering over library shelves or consulting
eagerly with Brooks Insall. Sometimes Augusta Maturin thought of Janet as
a wildflower--one of the rare, shy ones, hiding under its leaves; sprung
up in Hampton, of all places, crushed by a heedless foot, yet
miraculously not destroyed, and already pushing forth new and eager
tendrils. And she had transplanted it. To find the proper nourishment, to
give it a chance to grow in a native, congenial soil, such was her
breathless task. And so she had selected "The Child's Garden of Verses."

"I should like to rise and go
Where the golden apples grow"...

When she laid down her book it was to talk, perhaps, of Silliston.
Established here before the birth of the Republic, its roots were bedded
in the soil of a racial empire, to a larger vision of which Augusta
Maturin clung: an empire of Anglo-Saxon tradition which, despite
disagreements and conflicts--nay, th