"
He released her, mounted his motor bicycle, and rode away. Phyllis
watched him disappear up the avenue; then she walked rather
blindly back to the bench and sat down among the ruins of a black
and abominable world. After a while the friendly robin, seeing her
so still, perched first on the back of the bench and then hopped
on the seat by her side, and cocking his head, looked at her
enquiringly out of his little hard eye, as though he would say:
"My dear child, what are you making all this fuss about? Isn't it
early June? Isn't the sun shining? Aren't the chestnuts in flower?
Don't you see that bank of dark blue cloud over there which means
a nice softening rain in the night and a jolly good breakfast of
worms in the morning? What's wrong with this exquisitely perfect
universe?"
And Phyllis--on her own confession--with an angry gesture sent him
scattering up among the cool broad leaves and cried:
"Get away, you hateful little beast!"
And having no use for robins and trees and spring and sunshine and
such like intolerable ironies, a white little wisp of a nurse left
them all to their complacent riot and went back to the hospital.
CHAPTER XII
A few days after this, Mrs.
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