and by eliminating, not too deprecatingly, Mrs. Maturin's
impatient proposals, brought her to a point where she blurted out the
solution herself.

"Oriental poppies! How stupid of me not to think of them!"

"How stupid of me!" Insall echoed--and Janet, bending over her weeding,
made sure they had been in his mind all the while.

Augusta Maturin's chief extravagance was books; she could not bear to
await her turn at the library, and if she liked a book she wished to own
it. Subscribing to several reviews, three English and one American, she
scanned them eagerly every week and sent in orders to her Boston
bookseller. As a consequence the carved walnut racks on her library table
were constantly being strained. A good book, she declared, ought to be
read aloud, and discussed even during its perusal. And thus Janet, after
an elementary and decidedly unique introduction to worth-while literature
in the hospital, was suddenly plunged into the vortex of modern thought.
The dictum Insall quoted, that modern culture depended largely upon what
one had not read, was applied to her; a child of the new environment
fallen into skilful hands, she was spared the boredom of wading through
the so-called classics which, though useful as milestones, as landmarks
for future reference, are largely mere reminders of an absolute universe
now vanished. The arrival of a novel, play, or treatise by one of that
small but growing nucleus of twentieth century seers was an event, and
often a volume begun in the afternoon was taken up again after supper.
While Mrs. Maturin sat sewing on the other side of the lamp, Janet had
her turn at reading. From the first she had been quick to note Mrs.
Maturin's inflections, and the relics of a high-school manner were
rapidly eliminated. The essence of latter-day realism and pragmatism, its
courageous determination to tear away a veil of which she had always been
dimly aware, to look the facts of human nature in the face, refreshed
her: an increasing portion of it she understood; and she was constantly
under the spell of the excitement that partially grasps, that hovers on
the verge of inspiring discoveries. This excitement, whenever Insall
chanced to be present, was intensified, as she sat a silent but often
quivering listener to his amusing and pungent comments on these new
ideas. His method of discussion never failed to illuminate and delight
her, and often, when she sat at her typewriter the next day, she wou