“I do not know that there are. You are wearing yourself out in the work of this parish, and you should be relieved.”
“But, my child, it is the duty of every servant of God to ‘spend and be spent’ in His service.”
“Yes,” said Roma thoughtfully, “and that your services may be the longer continued to your Lord and your people you must have an assistant.”
“But, my child, there are more ways——”
“Well, and there are more means,” said Roma. Then she broke forth, with sudden energy: “So much more means! Oh, Dr. Shaw, you don’t know how responsible I feel for all the wealth I have inherited. I hardly can think it is mine—that I have any right to it.”
“Yet it is all your own, by every moral and legal right.”
“What have I ever done to earn it, to win it, or to deserve it? Nothing. My father left me, his only child, this plantation. But the negroes made it what it is, not I. And the negroes have a heavy claim on me. But how is the best way to meet that claim? I shall want your wisdom to direct me. Then—as if this was not enough for one woman—my Uncle Guyon died, widowed and childless, and left me the Isle of Storms. What had I ever done to earn or win that fine sanitary sea home? Nothing whatever; and I have no right to keep it all to myself. Once, indeed, I thought of it as a summer resort for my friends and myself only, but that was the inspiration of pride and selflove. My friends were of that favored class who can choose their own summer homes among the mountains, or by the seashore, or wherever they please. The Isle of Storms was not given me for my own selfish pleasure, but for the best uses to humanity to which it can be put—perhaps as a sanatorium for destitute invalids and children. And then, again, as if this Goeberlin plantation and the Isle of Storms were not already much too much for one woman, my Uncle Thomas dies unmarried, and leaves me the silver mine in Colorado. He discovered the mine, not I. It has proved a source of almost fabulous wealth. But what have I done to earn, to win, or to deserve all that? Nothing whatever. So I know that all this is not mine, for my own selfish pride, but that it is intrusted to me as a steward of the Lord.”
“Tell me, dear child, how do you propose to discharge the duties of your stewardship? What are your ideas?”
“They are nebulous yet. I want your help to form them. I know there are things that I must do.”
“And these?”