chunk: Hartill's increasingly bizarre and offensive behaviour and her naive niece's growing dependence on her older friend call Elsbeth Loveday to action. When, on top of her shattered nerves, Alwynne Durand comes down with the flu, Loveday insists on her not returning to school for the rest of the term and on recuperating from her illness in the country instead. Alwynne agrees, if reluctantly at first, to spend some time with distant relatives she has never met before. The idyllic spring landscape she encounters after leaving town actually soothes her nerves, and Alwynne grows more and more fond of country life and the people she meets in her new surroundings.