The conversation buzzed cheerily. Everyone was full of his future plans.
“No, no, there is no holiday for me,” said Father Pierre. “We priests don’t get holidays. Now that the mission and school are formed I am to leave it to Father Amiel, and to push westwards to found another.”
“You are leaving?” said Mr. Patterson. “You don’t mean that you are going away from Ichau?”
Father Pierre shook his venerable head in waggish reproof. “You must not look so pleased, Mr. Patterson.”
“Well, well, our views are very different,” said the Presbyterian, “but there is no personal feeling towards you, Father Pierre. At the same time, how any reasonable educated man at this time of the world’s history can teach these poor benighted heathen that——”
A general buzz of remonstrance silenced the theology.
“What will you do yourself, Mr. Patterson?” asked someone.
“Well, I’ll take three months in Edinburgh to attend the annual meeting. You’ll be glad to do some shopping in Princes Street, I’m thinking, Mary. And you, Jessie, you’ll see some folk your own age. Then we can come back in the fall, when your nerves have had a rest.”
“Indeed, we shall all need it,” said Miss Sinclair, the mission nurse. “You know, this long strain takes me in the strangest way. At the present moment I can hear such a buzzing in my ears.”
“Well, that’s funny, for it’s just the same with me,” cried Ainslie. “An absurd up-and-down buzzing, as if a drunken bluebottle were trying experiments on his register. As you say, it must be due to nervous strain. For my part I am going back to Peking, and I hope I may get some promotion over this affair. I can get good polo here, and that’s as fine a change of thought as I know. How about you, Ralston?”