“And it might be done too,” she went on shrewdly. “With the Johnston and Bulkley and Oddingham holdings, my husband’s estate would pretty nearly control the Land Company’s affairs—they would vote with me, I’m sure. So maybe, you see”—smiling for almost the first time in all these weeks—“it was in my destiny to come here?”
“It may have been,” said David Joslin simply.
She ran on eagerly now. “We’ll have a church up there too, some time. Couldn’t you be the preacher some time, Mr. Joslin? And of course you’ll be president of the college. Listen at me talking! I’m just like a child.
“But you don’t answer,” she said, looking at him keenly. He was staring out steadily. Gaunt, with sunken eyes and prominent cheekbones, worn and drawn by the long hours of labor bodily and mental, David Joslin was not a handsome man, nor did even physical well-being seem vouchsafed to him now. He was sad, very sad. It seemed to her she had never seen a face so sad as his.
“Of course,” she reiterated, “you’ll be the president. You’ll have to preach—no one else could.”
He turned to her and half raised a hand. “You mustn’t,” said he. “That’s my school—yes. But I can’t be its president.”
“Why? What do you mean, Mr. Joslin?”
“You don’t understand. No, I reckon not.”