y
own, if only I can find the right place to clear to. I'm not
a townsman, and I think by now the bishop understands my
small-mindedness. I haven't the breadth of a good modern citizen.
I want to go to some Little Peddlington an African village might
suit me. No, directly the right man turns up, I don't doubt the
bishop will want to put him here in my room. Do you know of
anyone likely?' I did know of someone.

I did not write back; I got on my boat and started off for home.
I went down to the east country and set free the locum tenens.
The village had a bridal look for my eyes; the red-thorn tree was
just coming out, the roses would not be long now. I was in time
to be at our yearly May games after all. Next day I went to the
Midland town and saw my cousin; also, I saw his charge. I tried
to look at it with Leonard Reeve's eyes, recalling to my
remembrance that delirious night of his. Yes, though it was not
South London, it had a drab look on a dull June day. There was a
Warwick Arms, if no Surrey Arms. There was a shop with the
authentic fragrance only two or three doors off. I knew that
bishop, and I found him in, and in a listening mood, on the
following day. He wanted to hear about Africa. I described
missions and missionaries to him. Then I told him at some length
about Leonard Reeve.

'Yes, you have drawn the man convincingly,' he said. 'You didn't
invent those touches. I think he's a man after my own heart. I
don't understand you people that bury yourselves in little
rose-covered, immoral, earthy country villages. But I think I do
understand the man that you have described.' I went straight to
the point, and spoke of my cousin's parish. He agreed that my
cousin was a disappointment. 'He's got the same peddling way of
looking at things as you,' he said. 'I thought he'd flourish
after transplantation, but I admit he doesn't seem to. Yes, I
should think a desert and a barbarous people might suit him. I
don't deny that he has vision, but his sense of perspective seems
to be rather ridiculous.' I tried to arrange matters there and
then after that, but his lordship became politic, and seemed a
little afraid that he had said too much to me.

However, the business was on the way to be settled before I
parted from him. It has been settled quite a long while now. My
cousin, Richard East, now tramps the Kaffir paths and ministers
in the hill chapel and in that seven-domed church at the mission
station. I do not thin