“You shouldn’t switch that way, Boyd,” remonstrated Sargent, showing his keen disappointment. “When you began to agitate for the cathedral you brought a lot of our members in who hadn’t attended services in years. You stirred them up. You got them interested. They’ll drop right off.”
“I hope not,” returned the rector earnestly. “I hope to reach them with a higher ambition, a higher pride, a higher vanity, if you like to put it that way. I wish them to take joy in establishing the most magnificent living conditions for the poor which have ever been built! We have no right to the money which is to be paid us for the Vedder Court property. We have no right to spend it in pomp. It belongs to the poor from whom we have taken it, and to the city which has made us rich by enhancing the value of our ground. I propose to build permanent and sanitary tenements, to house as many poor people as possible, and conduct them without a penny of profit above the cost of repairs and maintenance.”
Gail bent upon him beaming eyes, and the delicate flush, which had begun to return to her cheeks, deepened. Was this the sort of tenements he had proposed to re-erect in Vedder Court? Perhaps she had been hasty! The Reverend Smith Boyd in turning slowly from one to the other of the little group, by way of establishing mental communication with them, rested, for a moment, in the beaming eyes of Gail, and smiled at her in affectionate recognition then swept his glance on to his mother, where it lingered.
“You are perfectly correct,” stated Gerald Fosland, who, though sitting stiffly upright, had managed nevertheless to dispose one elbow where it touched gently the surface of Arly. “Market Square Church is a much more dignified old place of worship than the ostentatious cathedral would ever be, and your project for spending the money has such strict justice at the bottom of it that it must prevail. But, I say, Doctor Boyd,” and he gave his moustache a contemplative tug; “don’t you think you should include a small margin of profit for the future extension of your idea?”
“That’s glorious, Gerald!” approved Gail; and Arly, laughing, patted his hand.
“You’re probably right,” considered the rector, studying Fosland with a new interest. “I think we’ll have to put you on the vestry.”
“I’d be delighted, I’m sure,” responded Gerald, in the courteous tone of one accepting an invitation to dinner.
“Do you hear what your son’s planning to do?” called Jim Sargent to Mrs. Boyd. He was not quite reconciled. “He proposes to take that wonderful new rectory away from you.”
The beautiful Mrs. Boyd merely dimpled.
“I am a trifle astonished,” she confessed. “My son has been so extremely eager about it; but if he is relinquishing the dream, it is because he wants something else very much more worth while. I entirely approve of his plan for the new tenements,” and she did not understand why they all laughed at her. She did feel, however, that there was affection in the laughter; and she was quite content. Laughing with them, she walked on with Grace Sargent. They had set out to make twenty trips around the deck, for exercise.