"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, through them--developed imperceptibly
toward a sublimer union, founded