parcels' rack
overhead.

"'_For light articles only_,'" she read out. "But-but how do we
manage when it's bedtime?"

"Bless the child, we don't sleep in the train! Why, in little over
an hour we shall be at Merchester, and that's home."

"Home!" Corona caught at the word and repeated it with a shiver of
excitement. "Home--in an hour?"

It was not that she distrusted; it was only that she could not focus
her mind down to so small a distance.

"And now," said Nurse Branscome cheerfully, as they settled
themselves down, "are you going to tell me about your passage, or am
I to tell you about your father and the sort of place St. Hospital
is? Or would you," added this wise woman, "just like to sit still
and look out of window and take it all in for a while?"

"Thank you," answered Corona, "that's what I want, ezactly."

She nestled into her corner as the train drew forth beyond the
purlieus and dingy suburbs of the great seaport and out into the
country--our south country, all green and glorious with summer.
Can this world show the like of it, for comfort of eye and heart?

Her eyes drank, devoured it.--Cattle knee-deep in green pasture,
belly-deep in green water-flags by standing pools; cattle resting
their long flanks while they chewed the cud; cattle whisking their
tails amid the meadow-sweet, under hedges sprawled over with wild
rose and honeysuckle.--White flocks in the lengthening shade of elms;
wood and copse; silver river and canal glancing between alders,
hawthorns, pollard willows; lichened bridges of flint and brick;
ancient cottages, thatched or red-tiled, timber-fronted, bulging out
in friendliest fashion on the high road; the high road looping its
way from village to village, still between hedges. Corona had never
before set eyes on a real hedge in the course of her young life; but
all this country--right away to the rounded chalk hills over which
the heat shimmered--was parcelled out by hedges--hedges by the
hundred--and such hedges!

"It's--it's like a garden," she stammered, turning around and meeting
a question in Nurse Branscome's eyes. "It's all so lovely and tiny
and bandboxy. However do they find the time for it?"

"Eh, it takes time," said Nurse Branscome, amused. "You'll find
that's the main secret with us over here. But--disappointed, are
you?"

"Oh, no--no--no!" the child assured her. "It's ten times lovelier
than ever I 'spected--only," she added, cuddling down for another