The tension of Newbold’s watching snapped like a spent cord. There was a change upon his face, a change in his voice, “Bishop, why did you come to me this morning? They must have told you downstairs that I did not wish to see anyone. Yet you came.”
“I had a gift to bring.”
“For me?”
“Not now, I am afraid. Still I have no one else, lad, to leave it with. It is for Westbury.”
“What gift?”
“One I have been thinking of for a long time. You see Christmas always sets me dreaming, and in these last weeks I’ve been much shut in, so that I’ve had a good deal of time to look out of my window and to send my thoughts up and down the streets. I suppose it is because I have been about so little of late that I failed to hear of the closing of the mission, although I knew you were worried about the funds. So I’ve been happy with my plan. You’ve listened to my dreams before,” the Bishop smiled his little quick, appealing smile, “even though you haven’t always—” he broke off, a wistful twinkle of remembrance in his eyes. “I’m still an incorrigible visionary, you think, lad?” The twinkle died. “Perhaps I am!”
“No!” cried Newbold, “No! I—I would have helped to carry out all your dreams, Bishop, if I could, if they’d been practical. Why, Bishop,” Newbold smiled the first real smile of the morning, “you’re irresistible as my Lois when you want things. Even Mrs. Hollister has to do what you want!”
“Even Mrs. Hollister!” repeated the Bishop wonderingly. “But, of course, for she is my friend.”
“You understand Mrs. Hollister better than I do, Bishop,” Newbold murmured darkly, then could have bitten his lip, for he saw on the Bishop’s face the fine, controlled recoil that told Newbold he had once again said something no real Westburian would have said. Clumsy again, when he was watching himself all the time! Oh, if there was one thing Newbold envied the Bishop, it was his inalienable social grace!
The Bishop’s smile was strangely wrought of sun and sadness. “To go back to my dream,” he suggested, “so far from being prepared for the closing of the mission, I had actually been planning its enlargement.” He grew a little hesitant and shy, “You see I have a small private fortune, not very much, some sixty thousand. I have, as you know, no near relatives. I’m not much of a business man, as you are well aware, and I have also perhaps a foolish reluctance to leaving anything in the shape of a memorial, anything bearing my name,—yet it was here in Westbury, in St. John’s, and at the founding of the mission in the Southside sixty years ago, that there first came to me—the meaning of the Christian ministry.” A moment his eyes grew dream-bright, as he continued, “I’m so in the habit of trusting all money matters to you that I have simply had my will made out to you, without any stipulation as to the object—”