"Never a word," said the good woman. "Ye see it's this way, my little son, ye're like a priest an' it's not the right thing for a priest."
"I don't want to be a priest," said he impatiently.
"Tut, tut, my laddie boy! It's for God to say an' for us to obey," she answered.
When the widow had gone to her room for the night and Bob was thinking it over, Mr. Bloggs remarked that in his opinion they should keep up their courage for it was a very grand thing to be a priest after all.
Winters he spent deep in books out of Judge Crooker's library and tending his potted plants and painting them and the thick blanket of snow in the garden. Among the happiest moments of his life were those that followed his mother's return from the post-office with The Bingville Sentinel. Then, as the widow was wont to say, he was like a dog with a bone. To him, Bingville was like Rome in the ancient world or London in the British Empire. All roads led to Bingville. The Sentinel was in the nature of a habit. One issue was like unto another—as like as "two chaws off the same plug of tobaccer," a citizen had once said. Its editor performed his jokes with a wink and a nudge as if he were saying, "I will now touch the light guitar." Anything important in the Sentinel would have been as misplaced as a cannon in a meeting-house. Every week it caught the toy balloons of gossip, the thistledown events which were floating in the still air of Bingville. The Sentinel was a dissipation as enjoyable and as inexplicable as tea. It contained portraits of leading citizens, accounts of sundry goings and comings, and teas and parties and student frolics.
To the little Shepherd, Bingville was the capital of the world and Mr. J. Patterson Bing, the first citizen of Bingville, who employed eleven hundred men and had four automobiles, was a gigantic figure whose shadow stretched across the earth. There were two people much in his thoughts and dreams and conversation—Pauline Baker and J. Patterson Bing. Often there were articles in the Sentinel regarding the great enterprises of Mr. Bing and the social successes of the Bing family in the metropolis. These he read with hungry interest. His favorite heroes were George Washington, St. Francis and J. Patterson Bing. As between the three he would, secretly, have voted for Mr. Bing. Indeed, he and his friends and intimates—Mr. Bloggs and the rubber tree and the little pine bureau and the round nickel clock—had all voted for Mr. Bing. But he had never seen the great man.
Mr. Bing sent Mrs. Moran a check every Christmas and, now and then, some little gift to Bob, but his charities were strictly impersonal. He used to say that while he was glad to help the poor and the sick, he hadn't time to call on them. Once, Mrs. Bing promised the widow that she and her husband would go to see Bob on Christmas Day. The little Shepherd asked his mother to hang his best pictures on the walls and to decorate them with sprigs of cedar. He put on his starched shirt and collar and silk tie and a new black coat which his mother had given him. The Christmas bells never rang so merrily.
The great white bird in the Congregational Church tower—that being Bob's thought of it—flew out across the valley with its tidings of good will.
To the little Shepherd it seemed to say: "Bing—Bing—Bing—Bing—Bing—Bing! Com-ing, Com-ing, Com-ing!!"
Many of the friends of his mother—mostly poor folk of the parish who worked in the mill—came with simple gifts and happy greetings. There were those among them who thought it a blessing to look upon the sweet face of Bob and to hear his merry laughter over some playful bit of gossip and Judge Crooker said that they were quite right about it. Mr. and Mrs. J. Patterson Bing were never to feel this blessing. The Shepherd of the Birds waited in vain for them that Christmas Day. Mrs. Bing sent a letter of kindly greeting and a twenty-dollar gold piece and explained that her husband was not feeling "quite up to the mark," which was true.