"I didn't ask their names and had time only for a word with them. There is one poor fellow whose head was all bandaged up. They fear he will lose his sight. I want to get Meredith down to look at him. There is a chance for you girls to do some good work. You can read to him, and your music should be a solace, Anita. It must be hard for a great strong man like that to sit for hours with nothing to do and nothing to entertain him."
"I certainly will play for him and the others as well," said Anita, eagerly.
"And I should love to read to him," Lillian was quite as eager. "We can go over early every day, Anita. We will give him some of our flowers, for he can smell those. Granny strips the greenhouse every day, and is more zealous than ever about getting her plants to blossom."
"Good thing, good thing," responded the rector. "It is those little things which help almost more than the big ones."
While Mr. Kirkby consulted with Mrs. Teaness and Mrs. Beltrán, Eleanor and Alicia led the two other girls into the big sunny room which was now turned over to those of the convalescents who could sit there. Even in winter it was by no means an unattractive outlook from the broad windows; wide stretches of lawn still green, hillsides of gorse, rolling slopes of the Downs against the horizon, clumps of evergreen in the foreground behind which one could see whitewashed cottages, a half-hidden church, a line of shining water. The big room had been made as comfortable as possible with reclining chairs, couches, a piano, an open fire, a table of magazines, newspapers and books, while soft rugs upon the floor hushed the tread of feet which might set some fretted nerves to tingling.
The little bunches of flowers, so carefully tied up by Aunt Manning and showing a rosebud, a geranium leaf, a sprig of begonia, a touch of mignonette, were divided between the two who had brought them over from Primrose Cottage. Lillian began her rounds at one side of the room; Anita took the other. She selected the sweetest of her bouquets and carried it to a man with bandaged head who sat in the sunshine by a window. The bandages covered his eyes and chin so only his mouth and the tip of his nose were visible. A lump arose in Anita's throat as she looked at the quiet figure, so helpless, so uncomplaining. She stood for a moment before she said, "I have brought you a tiny bunch of flowers. Would you like to have me pin it on, or shall I lay it down here on the window-sill?"
The man started at the sound of her voice and held out his hand with the groping gesture of the blind. "I'd like to take it in my hand, please," he said.
HE HELD OUT HIS HAND WITH GROPING GESTURE