Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/203



EHIND the fat hedge, there was a lawn like a public park. The grass was as close and fine as green plush; the undulations of the ground were padded and upholstered with it; the sun and shadow lay upon it in a figured design of leaves. Great trees stood about it, as stolid and dignified as if they had been set out by a butler. And in the midst of it, surrounded by formal beds of flowers and bushes, a huge building of ruddy sandstone, with innumerable windows, lifted heavily a square, squat tower.

It was the almshouse. On this millionaire's lawn, under these pompous trees, groups of old women in dresses of blue denim, with gingham aprons, sat gossiping over their sewing, smoking clay pipes, counting the beads of their rosaries, or dozing in the heat of the sun—as wrinkled as lizards, and blinking against the blaze of sunlight that gave an almost reptilian sparkle to their puckered eyes. Veterans in the unending battle of life, no longer able to struggle for the food to keep them struggling, they had been brought here to die in peace.

Among them was a Mrs. Judd, an old Englishwoman who had impressed the nurses with her patience and capability. They did not have to use any stratagems to draw her to her weekly bath. She kept her room neat