"'The error was, we started wrong,'" said Mrs. Valentin lightly. "We took the morning instead of the evening train. But I was convinced we should be left, and I preferred to get left by the wrong train and have the right one to fall back on." She ceased her babble, as vain words die when there is a sense of no one listening.
Elsie stood at the window looking back into the room. She thought, "Mother doesn't know what she is saying. What is she worried about?"
The bishop was writing with a gold pencil on the margin of the newspaper. He folded it with the writing on top.
"If you had consulted me about that child,"—he looked at Elsie,—"I should have said, 'Do not hurry her—do not hurry her. Her education will come as God sends it.' With experience, as with death, it is the prematureness that hurts."
His beautiful voice and perfect accent filled the silence with heart-warmed cadences.
"Well, good-by, Mrs. Valentin. Remember me to that busy husband."
Mrs. Valentin rose; the bishop took her hand. "Elsie will see me to the elevator. This is the evening paper."
He offered it with the writing toward her. Mrs. Valentin read what he had written: "Billy Castant was killed in the charge at San Juan. Every man in that fight deserves the thanks of the nation."
"Come, Elsie, see me to my carriage," the bishop was saying. He placed the girl's hand on his arm and led her out of the room. At the elevator grating they waited a moment; the cold draft up the shaft fanned the hair back from Elsie's forehead as she stood looking down, watching the ascent of the cage.
"It would be a happy thing," said the bishop, "if parents could always go with their children on these long roads of experience; but there are some roads the boys and the girls will have to take alone. We shall all meet at the other end, though—we shall all meet at the end."