She picked a bunch of flowers as she trotted along, for a mother who would appreciate them. They were fruit trees in heaven, of course, with leaves for the healing of the nations, like the eucalyptus tree, she supposed, on the vicarage front lawn; but _Rev. xxii_ said nothing about flowers. “Too much pavement,” thought Laura, the gardener. She supposed that even if grass tried to seed itself in the dust of the cracks the dust would be gold.... There couldn’t be much nourishment in gold-dust.... Anyhow, here was one of Mother’s own autumn bunches for her, pulled from the dear chalk soil—an exquisite disorder of oat-grass and hips-and-haws, late sprigs of yellow-wort between the scabious cushions, like stars on a lilac sky, with oak-apples and bleached heather and fans of scarlet bracken—all put together by the skilful, flower-loving hands she had inherited from her mother. A bigger part than she realized of her first light-footed hour had gone in the picking of them. The end of the second saw her passing a village bakery, with a wistful eye on the stack of loaves and bars of mouldy chocolate behind the blurred, thick panes. She hesitated as, through the open door, the round, red-rimmed baker’s clock told her, between hiccoughs, that it was half-past two and that she was hungry. So hungry, indeed, that for a moment her fingers closed on the purse at the bottom of her pocket. A penny, three half-pennies, two farthings and a threepenny bit.... Sixpence ... Gran’papa’s Euclid himself couldn’t make it more than sixpence.... No, she mustn’t.... Yet there was such virtue in a ha’penny bun—a round, shiny, sticky, steamy, curranty ha’penny bun! She supposed it wouldn’t do if she offered St. Peter fivepence halfpenny—and explained? If only St. John had the keys.... St. John would let her in at once, she felt sure. But St. Peter? He might, of course ... but perhaps it was wiser not to risk it.... When she got to Mother there would be tea, tea without bread-and-butter first, the kind of tea Aunt Adela never knew.... Mother would see to that.... She could wait.... She wasn’t so awfully hungry.... She turned resolutely from temptation and hurried on. But she was no longer dancing effortlessly along like a kitten or a whirled leaf: her haste had become deliberate and would soon be painful. She was growing—infallible sign of exhaustion—conscious of her body: conscious that her back was aching; that she was thirsty as well as hungry; that, through her sand shoes, the surface of the road knubbed her wincing feet. She carried her bunch of flowers, drooping, too, by this time, across her shoulder to ease her tired arm, but they were very heavy. Such a great big bunch—but then Laura, her life long, will always undertake a little more than she can manage. Above her the unconquered hill-road stretched as steep and long and high as Jack’s Beanstalk. She climbed it wearily, bargaining herself upward—