Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/133

Rh resting or labouring. More than one Willie recognized as erstwhile fellow-inmates of the hospital.

"You did not bring the terrible screen with you," he said to a nurse he knew; "you'll never want it here."

"We have to thank you, young man, for inciting the doctor to initiate a reform with respect to hospital methods and management that has long been awaiting some one to start it."

"When I look around on these scenes," the nurse added to Gwyneth, "I shudder as I think of those blank white-washed walls, with the lines of close-packed houses and dusty, stifling streets on which we used to look. Nearly all, we find, can do something here—feed fowls, cut flowers for the market, and see to the silk-worms. Others garden and farm quite effectively. It is the sense of home and ownership that prompts them."

"You remember," said Gwyneth, "the saying of Arthur Young—was it not—somewhat to this effect? 'Set a man to work in the garden of another, and it will speedily become a wilderness; give him personal interest in a desert rock, and he will cause it to flourish, and blossom as the rose.'"

A long visit Gwyneth paid to the consumptives on the hill. They had a peculiar attraction for her. Their lot was so hopeless, where all others were renewing their strength.

"They seem half-way to heaven already," said Willie, as in the hot afternoon the two panted up the hill. "I fear they've got the screen here."

"It's a terrible disease," replied the girl, as though communing with her own thoughts. "Largely bred of foul air, and unhealthy, unnatural conditions of modern life. The scourge of God! My mother fell its victim.