“Why, it’s you!” he said, and suddenly she recalled his name.

“Mr. Insall!”

But his swift glance had noticed the expression in her eyes, the sagged condition of her clothes, the attitude that proclaimed exhaustion.  He took her by the arm and led her to the little storeroom, turning on the light and placing her in a chair.  Darkness descended on her....

Mrs. Maturin, returning from an errand, paused for an instant in the doorway, and ran forward and bent over Janet.

“Oh, Brooks, what is it—­what’s happened to her?”

“I don’t know,” he replied, “I didn’t have a chance to ask her.  I’m going for a doctor.”

“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