It was not a very lucid way of explaining it, but the spirit was willing if the learning was weak, and Tom left her with a determination that, if possible, the girl should have her heart's desire.
CHAPTER VII
A BISHOP'S VISIT
"Everything comes to an issue to him who knows how to wait," said Tom Chance, folding up the local newspaper with an air of deep satisfaction.
He was sitting in the verandah at the farm, and Betty busied herself with a pile of mending that lay on the table before her. Tom often found his way up to the farm on a Saturday evening when his work was finished, for devoted as he and his sister were to each other, in Betty he found a more understanding sympathiser with his work. She looked up now with a quick smile.
"What have you been waiting for?"
"Waiting to catch the Bishop, and I believe the time has come when I may hope to hook him. Anyway, I will write to-night."
"Then he's likely to be in the neighbourhood?"
"He's advertised in that paper as due at Rumney in a fortnight's time to open their new little church."
"Not really!" cried Betty, laying down her work. "How perfectly delightful! Do you know that church has taken twenty years in the building? at least the first money for it was collected twenty years ago, but it was not nearly enough to cover the cost, so it was laid aside to wait for better days, and it seemed as if the better days were never coming. Now one energetic farmer has taken it up, and pushed it through by hook or crook, but I did not know it was so near completion. I must get over to the opening."