"I am afraid you really must excuse me! I cannot undertake to examine a long prospectus. Time is precious, and my own work is too exacting in its claims."
"That is what brings me here," the young man replied, still with a cheerful, undaunted look. "It is, I think, in line with your work, the importance of which I fully recognize. This is the prospectus of a paper which I propose to issue in the interest of our common humanity. It is designed to promote the brotherhood of man, to secure a better feeling between class and class, employer and employed,—a fairer scale of wages and hours for the operative, fuller coöperation between employer and employés and mutual consideration for each other's interests; in short, to propagate that spirit of Christian socialism which the minister of Christ——"
But here the clergyman's ill-controlled impatience broke its bounds. Preoccupied as he was, he had caught little more than the last words.
"I can have nothing to do with any socialistic schemes," he exclaimed. "There is far too much mischievous nonsense afloat!—simply producing discontent with existing conditions, and with the differences which, in Providence, have always existed. I must really decline any further conversation on this subject," and, with unmistakable suggestiveness, Mr. Chillingworth placed his hand on the half-open door.
A faintly perceptible shade of vexation seemed just to flit across the bright serenity of the young man's frank, open face. He saw very well that persistence would do no good, and yielded to the force of circumstances with the best grace he could muster.
"Good afternoon, then, sir," he said, in a tone that, if not quite so cheery, was as amiable as ever. "I am sorry I cannot enlist your sympathy in our undertaking, as I should like to have all Christian ministers with us. I shall send you a specimen copy of the paper, and hope you will kindly read it."
"Good afternoon," the minister reiterated curtly, showing his visitor to the door with very scant courtesy.
Just as the door was about to close behind him, an unexpected interruption occurred, in the shape of an apparition of a character very unusual at Mr. Chillingworth's door. It was a little girl, who looked about eight or nine years old, but might have been older, quaintly wrapped in a shawl that had once been handsome, while a little fur-trimmed hood that was quite too small for her framed a mass of dark tangled curls, out of which large, lustrous gray eyes, strikingly beautiful in form and color, looked up from under their long dark eyelashes, with a soft, grave, appealing gaze. Her shabby, old-fashioned garb gave her, at first sight, the appearance of an ordinary vagrant child; but there was nothing sordid about the little creature. Her childish beauty, indeed, caught Roland Graeme, whose heart was always open to such spells, with an irresistible fascination.
The little girl looked eagerly up at the two men; then, seeming to divine which was the object of her quest, she said timidly, yet with a refinement of tone and accent somewhat out of keeping with her poverty-stricken aspect:
"Please, minister, my mother is very ill, and she wants——"