me.
You want me to be an angel of light, and I'm only--a man." He turned
and went into the house.

The oldest inhabitant had not seen a devotion like the Bishop's and
Eleanor's. There was in it no condescension on one side, no strain on
the other. The soul that through fulness of life and sorrow and
happiness and effort had reached at last a child's peace met as its like
the little child's soul, that had known neither life nor sorrow nor
conscious happiness, and was without effort as a lily of the field. It
may be that the wisdom of babyhood and the wisdom of age will look very
alike to us when we have the wisdom of eternity. And as all the colors
of the spectrum make sunlight, so all his splendid powers that patient
years had made perfect shone through the Bishop's character in the white
light of simplicity. No one knew what they talked about, the child and
the man, on the long walks that they took together almost every day,
except from Eleanor's conversation after. Transmigration, done into the
vernacular, and applied with startling directness, was evidently a
fascinating subject from the first. She brought back as well a vivid
and epigrammatic version of the nebular hypothesis.

"Did you hear 'bout what the world did?" she demanded, casually, at the
lunch-table. "We were all hot, nasty steam, just like a tea-kettle, and
we cooled off into water, sailin' around so much, and then we got crusts
on us, bless de Lawd, and then, sir, we kept on gettin' solid, and
circus animals grewed all over us, and then they died, and thank God for
that, and Adam and Evenin' camed, and Madge _can't_ I have some more
gingerbread? I'd just as soon be a little sick if you'll let me have
it."

The "fairyland of science and the long results of time," passing from
the Bishop's hands into the child's, were turned into such graphic
tales, for Eleanor, with all her airy charm, struck straight from the
shoulder. Never was there a sense of superiority on the Bishop's side,
or of being lectured on Eleanor's.

"Why do you like to walk with the Bishop?" Mrs. Vail asked, curiously.

"Because he hasn't any morals," said the little girl, fresh from a
Sunday-school lesson.

Saturday night Mr. Fielding stayed late in the city, and Dick was with
his lady-love at the Vails; so the Bishop, after dining alone, went down
on the wide beach below the house and walked, as he smoked his cigar.
Through the week he had been restless under the constant prick