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 schoolmam," she declared. "No board of
trustees would put up with me