“Leave her to me, and call Miss Hay.” Mrs. Maturin was instantly competent .... And when Insall came back from the drug store where he had telephoned she met him at the head of the stairs. “We've done everything we can, Edith Hay has given her brandy, and gone off for dry clothes, and we've taken all the children's things out of the drawers and laid her on the floor, but she hasn't come to. Poor child,—what can have happened to her? Is the doctor coming?”
“Right away,” said Insall, and Mrs. Maturin went back into the storeroom. Miss Hay brought the dry clothes before the physician arrived.
“It's probably pneumonia,” he explained to Insall a little later. “She must go to the hospital—but the trouble is all our hospitals are pretty full, owing to the sickness caused by the strike.” He hesitated. “Of course, if she has friends, she could have better care in a private institution just now.”
“Oh, she has friends,” said Mrs. Maturin. “Couldn't we take her to our little hospital at Silliston, doctor? It's only four miles—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”...