She was thinking of the two open-air meetings at Brownmouth and Frimpton. There had been no violence offered to the speakers, as in the Latchford case; the police had seen to that. Her guardian had made no appearance at either, satisfied, no doubt, after enquiry, that she was not likely to come to harm. But the evidence of public disapproval could scarcely have been more chilling--more complete. Both her speaking, and that of Gertrude and Paul Lathrop, seemed to her to have dropped dead in exhausted air. An audience of boys and girls--an accompaniment of faint jeers, testifying rather to boredom than hostility--a sense of blank waste and futility when all was over:--her recollection had little else to shew. Gertrude interrupted her thought. "My dear Delia!--what you want is to get out of this backwater, and back into the main stream! Even I get stale here. But in those great London meetings--there one catches on again!--one realises again--what it all _means_! Why not come up with me next week, even if the flat's not ready? I can't have you running down like this! Let's hurry up and get to London." The speaker had risen, and standing behind Delia, she laid her hand on the waves of the girl's beautiful hair. Delia looked up. "Very well. Yes, I'll come. I've been getting depressed. I'll come--at least if Weston's all right." * * * * * "I'm afraid, Miss Blanchflower, this is a very serious business!" Dr. France was the speaker. He stood with his back to the fire, and his hands behind him, surveying Delia with a look of absent thoughtfulness; the look of a man of science on the track of a problem. Delia's aspect was one of pale consternation. She had just heard that the only hope of the woman, now wrestling upstairs with agonies of pain, lay in a critical and dangerous operation, for which at least a fortnight's preliminary treatment would be necessary. A nurse was to be sent for at once, and the only question to be decided was where and by whom the thing was to be done. "We _can_ move her," said France, meditatively; "though I'd rather not. And of course a hospital is the best place." "She won't go! Her mother died in a hospital, and Weston thinks she was neglected." "Absurd! I assure you," said France warmly. "Nobody is neglected in hospitals." "But one can't persuade her--and if she's forced against her will, it'll give her no chance!" said Delia in distress. "No, it must be here. You say we can get a good man from Brownmouth?" They discussed the possibilities of an operation at Maumsey.