The jays and sapsuckers were on the spirea together, and a dozen small, crested birds with brown backs and slate-colored breasts were flitting anxiously about the spruce-tree. Across the open space, at an asylum window, was a little girl, flattening her nose against the pane. She was wrapped in a heavy blanket, and she wore a shade!
Was it Gwinie? She saw him. The flattened nose drew back, and its owner waved a hand. It was Gwinie. Suddenly she turned, as if something had compelled her attention in the room behind her. And then she disappeared. The bishop felt a pang of loneliness.
Ten minutes passed while he wondered what he could do. He put the question to the cardinal himself on the sill: How could either of them ask fat little old Aunt Sally to wade out through the big drifts to that tray? Then the telephone rang again.
“It’s Gwinie. Miss Lowry says I may speak one minute. It’s about Mr. Blythe. He takes the orders from the asylum for Santy Claus every year. We tell him what we want most, and he puts it down, and we get it. This year the doctor had to take the orders for him because of the measles. So I asked the doctor to-day, if he saw Mr. Blythe, to get him to ask Santy to see to the birds till I get over the measles. And Mr. Blythe just called up to say he will telephone Santy direct, himself, about tending to them.”
It is to be presumed that when “Santy” received the message, he acted promptly. No doubt he knew as well as Gwinie did—although the bishop did not know—that even in the South a starving cardinal compelled to endure the rigors of a night with the thermometer at zero would be a little scarlet corpse on the snow by morning. Before the early dusk quite closed in, the grocer’s delivery boy appeared in the bishop’s side yard. He took off his cap to the dignitary at the window, tramped knee-deep out to the bird-tray, and emptied his pockets and the contents of a paper bag on the tray. Then he lifted his cap again to the figure at the window, and departed.
The door of the bishop’s room opened, and Mrs. Dyer appeared, followed by Aunt Sally, who bore the patient’s supper. The women stirred the open fire, brushed the hearth, drew the curtains, and lighted the lamp. They pulled the table up near the blaze, laid the white cloth upon it, and arranged the contents of the tray.
“Creamed oysters, beefsteak, rolls, waffles, coffee, quince preserves? Good gracious, Mrs. Dyer, do I, a patient, dare to eat all that? Very well, then, since my friend the cardinal has his supper also, outside. But you do not know about that. And, one moment, Mrs. Dyer, before you and Aunt Sally go; who is Mr. Blythe?”
“He goes by heah ev’y mornin’ to the trolley. He’s one o’ those heah pink-colored young men,” said Aunt Sally.
“He’s a general favorite,” said Mrs. Dyer. “He lives with an aunt up on the hill.”
“He sells money at one o’ these heah banks. The bishop he bought his’n f’om him. Got it ev’y Sat’day reg’lar foh to pay us’en off all roun’.”