" said the doctor severely, lifting a finger, "you're to keep to
the pavement mind--just outside, where it's nice and shady. Only so far
as the next turning and back; no crossing anywhere or getting in the way
of traffic, and only for half an hour. The chimes from St. Barnabas
will tell you, if you can't read the clock."

She had learnt to read the time before she was five years old, and had a
mind to tell him, but checked herself and merely nodded her head.

"Half an hour, and the pavement only. Is that understood?"

"Honest!"

It annoyed her--when, an hour later, she began to dress for the
adventure--to find herself weaker than she had at all supposed.
Although she forbore to mention it to the Second Nurse, there was an
irresponsible funny feeling in her legs. They seemed to belong to her
but by fits and starts. But the clothes were hers: the merino skirt a
deal too short for her--she had grown almost an inch in her bed-lying--
the chip hat, more badly crushed than ever, a scandal of a hat, but
still hers. The dear, dear clothes! She held them in both hands and
nuzzled into them, inhaling her lost self in the new-old scent of
liberty.

When at length her hat was donned, the notion took her to stand by the
sick woman's bed to show herself.

Consciousness had drained away deep into the sick woman's eyes.
It wavered there darkly, submerged, half-suspended, as you may see the
weed waver in a dim seapool. Did a bubble, a gleam, float up from the
depths? At any rate, the child nodded bravely.

"Goin' to fetch 'im, don't you fret!"

CHAPTER II

HOW TRUE TILDA CAME TO DOLOROUS GARD

"_Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set. And blew 'Childe Roland to
the Dark Tower came.'_" BROWNING.

Fifty years before, the Hospital of the Good Samaritan had been the pet
"charity" of a residential suburb. Factories and slums had since
crowded in upon it, ousting the residents and creeping like a tide over
the sites of their gardens and villas. The street kept its ancient
width, and a few smoke-blackened trees--lilacs, laburnums, limes, and
one copper-beech--still dignified the purlieus. Time, ruthless upon
these amenities, had spared, and even enlarged, the hospital.

It stood on the shaded side of the street. Nevertheless, the sunshine,
reflected from the facade of mean houses across the way, dazzled Tilda
as she crossed the threshold of the great doorway and hopped down the
steps. There were five ste