The new wing of the hospital was a subject about which Lord Inverbroom wanted to talk to his guest, and for a little while that engaged them. This open weather had allowed the building to go on apace, and by the end of March the wing should be advanced enough to permit of the opening ceremony. The Board of hospital directors would see to that, and Lord Inverbroom sketched out his idea for the day. The ceremony of the opening he proposed should be in the morning, and for it he hoped to secure the presence of a very distinguished personage. Lunch would follow, and if Mr Keeling approved, he would at the luncheon announce the name of the munificent giver. Then he paused a moment.VIII THE JAYHAWKERS
Director
IIINo, but we must try to be friends now."Yes, the General told me. And so you think--"The clock chimed again, and his room had grown so dark that he had to turn on the electric light to see what the hour was. He went downstairs and through the show rooms, blazing with lights still populous with customers, into the square. The toneless blue of night had already advanced far past the zenith; in the west a band of orange marked where the sun had set, and just above it was a space of delicate pale green on the upper{306} edge of which a faint star twinkled. As he passed between the hornbeam hedges in the disused graveyard, the odour of the spring night, of dew on the path, of the green growth on the trees, was alert in the air. The mysterious rapture of the renewal of life tingled round him, the summons to expand, to blossom, to love was echoed and re-echoed from the bushes, where mated birds were still chirruping. As he walked through the gathering dusk, thick with the choruses of spring, the years fell from him like withered leaves long-lingering, and his step quickened into the pace of youth, though it only bore him to The Cedars, and the amazing futility of one of Lady Keelings smaller dinner-parties.