My Synopsis:

The book begins with "a flitting" as Oliver Bruce moves from the family home following his mother's death:

"If you want really to get a just idea of the value of your    household goods, the surest way to arrive at it is by observing them during their removal from one house to another; and the moment of deepest humiliation is when some cherished possession, which you have always hitherto regarded with respect, stands on the pavement on its way from van to house, exposed to the deriding gaze of passersby,  in all its naked shabbiness.

"You hardly recognize your household gods...

"Oliver Bruce, as he stood on the damp pavement, littered with straw and paper, surveying the unpacking of his furniture from the great yellow van, and it gradual conveyance up four flights of stairs to the flat he had taken in Parley Mansions, West Kensington, felt that he ought to apologise [sic] to the world in general for the shabbiness of his belongings."

The new household includes Mrs. Sims [the source of much humor due to her marriage where there was "considerable disparity of years" and her difficulties in adjusting to life in London], Oliver's "nurse in the days of his childhood."

"Oliver Bruce had those unlucky possessions for a young man, an income just enough to make him independent of his own exertions, and a fond, admiring mother, who reflected all his whims and moods, and listened with earnest conviction to all his youthful conclusions.  So more than one profession was contemplated for his walk in life...   and then discarded..."

"Mrs. Bruce's annuity died with her, and though The Dene was  no grand country-seat, but only a pleasant old-fashioned cottage, its rent and attendant expenses were more than Oliver's income would cover..."

So Oliver, with his childhood nurse as housekeeper, leaves the country and moves to London to write his book.  But he is about to meet Gay, a young boy who has accidentally locked himself out of the neighboring flat in the middle of the night.  Gay and his younger sister, Dolores "Do", have been left home alone by their mother Maisie.

"We laugh at children's griefs and the trifles that cause them but they are very intense while they last, and there is a sense of despair and irretrievable disaster that overwhelms the young of heart out of all   proportion to the cause, which is rarely experienced in later years."

"What sort of mother could it be who could leave such a child night after night?"

A story well-told with the mystery of Maisie's present employment and past history,  with the romance of Oliver's reluctant courtship of the wealthy Miss Doris Mostyn, with all the charms of the nursery as Oliver and Mrs. Sims care for Gay, and finally, after two tragic deaths due to diphtheria, with a happy ending and another household move to a happy home in the country.

The major theme and image of this books is the idea, the ideal, the importance of home: 

·        The Dene, home of Oliver Bruce and his mother. 

·        Oliver's new residence, a London flat, where his old nurse is installed as housekeeper and his bookcase is an awkward fit. 

·        The Mostyn home in the country which Doris has left for a new home in London.  During Oliver's courtship of Doris he wonders if he could be at home there.  Would his bookcase fit? 

·        Maisie's home with her children in the flat across the hall from Oliver's flat in Parely Mansions. 

·        The picture on Maisie's wall of her family home which her children regard as home although they have never been there but only heard Maisie's stories about it. 

·        The children's idea (and perhaps Maisie's idea) of heaven is the home in the picture. 

·        The country estates of Gay's grandfathers.

By definition home is where Mother and child enjoy one another's presence, where one's bookcase fits, where there is access to the beauties of nature, where childhood and innocence dwell in happiness with a family who loves, accepts, and provides.

Views of Victorian life and culture:

medicine & public health—in describing the marriage of Maria Smithson to Mark Sims "but I am becoming painfully surgical in my images, perhaps because that, at the time... Oliver had every intention of taking up medicine as his profession in life—an intention, however, that he very soon abandoned."

"I do not think that a disagreeable thing ever improves or becomes less distasteful by being put off.  You had better gulp down your medicine without looking at it; it is twice as nasty after ten minutes' contemplation.  The only possible excuse for procrastination in doing unpleasant things is that on the morrow it may not be necessary to do them at all, but this is such a very off chance that it is hardly worth taking into consideration.  Anyhow, Oliver's pill was still in prospect..."

When Oliver asks Mrs. Sims to check on the ailing Do, she "grumbled... no doubt a powder was what the child wanted, or a dose of brimstone and treacle, as was reckoned a fine thing when she was a gal."

Mrs. Sims, speaking:  "I step in this afternoon when I knew that dirty slut of a char-woman had gone.  I see the doctor come in... and as I happened to be polishing the door-handle, I see him go; and he hadn't been gone ten minutes before that Mrs. Jones come out all of a fuss... saying something about not stopping there to catch all sorts of nasty complaints, and as she should jes' go and tell Mr. Rogers at the office... but as soon as she'd gone...  I jes' stepped across and rung the bell. Mrs. Maisie come to the door...  She was white as my apron and all of a tremble, but she only opened the door a crack, and she says, 'We've got diphtheria here... so you'd best not come in.'  She was jes' going to close the door when I got my foot in. 'Have both the children got it?' I says.  'Not yet,' she says, and she put both hands to her throat as if the words kinder strangled her—'not yet—not Gay yet.'

Despite the warning Mrs. Sims is not afraid and enters the flat and tidies "up a bit.  'It's little Do,' she say, 'as is ill.  The doctor don't think she's very bad, but he says as Gay may take it.'  'You did oughter send him away,' I says; and she says, 'That's jes' what the doctor says, but I've nowhere to send him.  I've got him in the farthest room, and I'm putting up a carbolic sheet, but he can't be alone always, and I must be with Do.'  'Let me and Master Oliver have him,' says I."

"Mrs. Sims was rather restive under the injunction not to go into the opposite flat...  and she was only coerced by Oliver into obedience by permission to concoct a brew of beef-tea after some special recipe of her own, which would give points to all the beef essences and extracts that simple-minded doctors or designing chemists flatter themselves are not to be surpassed." 

Mrs. Sims speaking, "She won't come in, and I tell you what is it, Master Oliver, she's making herself ill over nursing that child; and it's all stuff-a-rubbish shutting us all out, and some one did ought to tell her so, and make her go right off to bed and have a good night's rest.  It's a funny thing if an old woman like me, as has had to do with children all my life, can't see after this one, who, she 'lows, is on the mend.  It's a wonder she condescends to ask for some more of that beef-tea."

"Maisie was standing by the open window on the landing with her back turned to him; and though the evening was hot she had a shawl thrown over her head, and kept it drawn across her mouth, making her voice sound strange and muffled."  Maisie has come to see Gay "just once more."

Oliver invites her in, saying, "I don't think there is the slightest danger of carrying it from one case to another.  It is only taking the breath of the patient that they say is dangerous, leaning over them or kissing them.  I hope you are careful about this."

Maisie's letter:  "Little Do is dead.  she died this evening; and I have taken the diphtheria.  She will be buried to-morrow early, and I am going to the hospital."

Mr. Rogers, the landlord, comes to visit Oliver,  "Bad job that child's dying at No. 9..."

"Very," said Oliver, "I thought she was getting better."

"Yes, so did the doctor till last night.  Heart failure at last.  And the poor young lady ill too; and if a word of it gets about the Mansions a pretty life I shall be led.  I shall have half-a-dozen screeching at me at once....  One blessing is, these fine madams don't get up betimes or they might have seen the ambulance, and the coffin being brought down.  Dr. Grove managed it all, and if we can only keep it quiet and not get a scare through the Mansions I shall feel beholden to him to the end of my days."

Regarding the charwoman, Mrs. Jones, "...she's a tongue and a half."  "Oh, I've settled her!   She came bouncing into my office directly the doctor had said what was up, and I told her her goose was cooked if she let on a word about it; as, first of all, no one would dream of having her to work straight out of infection."

"...daily bulletins from the hospital brought the same information, that she was very ill and no better."  

"...an official-looking envelope from the Metropolitan Fever Hospital...  owing to some of the wards in the Fulham District Hospital being closed for repair, Mrs. Frampton had been transferred to Homerton..."

The Fever Hospital, its staff, patients, visitors are described in great detail:

"Up Homerton Road and along the high, blank walls of the Fever Hospital, that shut in so much terrible danger and disease.  And yet it seemed to Oliver as he turned in at the big gates and waited his turn for admission at the gate-keeper's window as if all the terrors of the place had vanished in the broad daylight of cheerful, common-sense hygiene.

"Everything and every one looked so aggressively clean and cheerful!"

"ambulance... stopped before the door of the 'receiving room"

"white-capped nurse bearing a flannel bundle in her arms"

"debating with the porter the propriety of acid tablets and cherries as food for the sick"  The acid tablets are given to the nurse but the cherries are refused.

"Then Oliver wandered on through a very long lime-washed corridor, redolent of carbolic cleanliness... and finally found himself in a room where" visitors "were arraying themselves in hideous hooded garments"

The children's ward is described, as is a tracheotomy case.  The nurses chatter about "scarlet and dips" and call particular patients by their bed numbers.

"Oliver sat down again, thinking of little Do dying the small close room with nothing but the mother's ignorant love, and he blamed himself for not insisting on her removal here, where all that human skill can do is ready to hand...."

"Through the blue glass borders of the long, frosted windows Oliver could see the trees of the hospital garden..." 

language of flowers

honeysuckle generous & devoted affection in the yard of The Dene

white violets faithfulness in death, thoughts in the churchyard where Mrs. Bruce is buried

the plane tree  genius outside the window the Oliver's flat viewed from the desk where he works

Doris & Oliver read Browning under the cedar strength

perfect tulips beautiful eyes, declaration of love, hopeless love (color dependent) at Doris Mostyn's home fame

poppies Oliver fantastic extravagance bought for himself and gave to Gay & Do

gardenia true friendship Doris gives Oliver the night of the musical

picture of home (in Mrs. Frampton's flat), "a spring picture": 

 horse-chestnut tree luxury

spruce fir elevation or time ("solemn evergreen branches...tricked out... with gay little tassles of light green and frivolous pink fir-cones")

white clematis mental beauty Gay imagines carrying Do

 mossy path and shrubbery (with nightingales) maternal love

poppies consolation

apple tree with pink and white blossoms  preference "fame speaks him great and good"

laurel hedge glory

roses (Marechal Niel) roses and maidenhair happy love and fascination Oliver finds the flowers he "bought lavishly" for his visit to Doris "aggressively bridal" later Doris calls them "lovely La France roses."

"I think if she had called them by the right name Oliver's heart might have melted towards her... so typical of Doris's nature, that strain after effective little turns with a trifling false note in them."

Oliver's walk with Gay as he takes him "home"

stubble fields

pink convolvuli worth sustained by judicious & tender  affection

scarlet poppies fantastic extravagance,  red poppies would be consolation

corn marigolds grief

turnip fields  charity

blackberries

a river with willows freedom

water-lilies purity of heart

rushes along the banks docility

forget-me-nots true love, forget me not

purple loosestrife

yellow ragwort