s
transmitter of qualities the Puritans possessed and tried to smother.
Certainly the fires are alight in her, and yet it's almost incredible
that he should have conveyed them. Of course I haven't seen the mother."

"It's curious he didn't mention her having been Ditmar's stenographer,"
Insall put in. "Was that reticence?"

"I hardly think so," Augusta Maturin replied. "It may have been, but the
impression I got was of an incapacity to feel the present. All his
emotions are in the past, most of his conversation was about Bumpuses who
are dead and buried, and his pride in Janet--for he has a pride--seems to
exist because she is their representative. It's extraordinary, but he
sees her present situation, her future, with extraordinary optimism; he
apparently regards her coming to Silliston, even in the condition in
which we found her, as a piece of deserved fortune for which she has to
thank some virtue inherited from her ancestors! Well, perhaps he's right.
If she were not unique, I shouldn't want to keep her here. It's pure
selfishness. I told Mr. Bumpus I expected to find work for her."

Mrs. Maturin returned Insall's smile. "I suppose you're too polite to say
that I'm carried away by my enthusiasms. But you will at least do me the
justice to admit that they are rare and--discriminating, as a
connoisseur's should be. I think even you will approve of her."

"Oh, I have approved of her--that's the trouble."

Mrs. Maturin regarded him for a moment in silence.

"I wish you could have seen her when I began to read those verses of
Stevenson's. It was an inspirations your thinking of them."

"Did I think of them?"

"You know you did. You can't escape your responsibility. Well, I felt
like--like a gambler, as though I were staking everything on a throw.
And, after I began, as if I were playing on some rare instrument. She lay
there, listening, without uttering a word, but somehow she seemed to be
interpreting them for me, giving them a meaning and a beauty I hadn't
imagined. Another time I told her about Silliston, and how this little
community for over a century and a half had tried to keep its standard
flying, to carry on the work begun by old Andrew, and I thought of those
lines,

"Other little children
Shall bring my boats ashore."

That particular application just suddenly, occurred to me, but she
inspired it."

"You're a born schoolma'am," Insall laughed.

"I'm much too radical for a schoolm