been trying to work out lately. This,"
David placed another drawing on the easel, "is about what it would be
like outside."

"It is," said Esther, "like seeing music."

Jonathan studied that drawing for several silent minutes.

"You keep up your professional work as a side issue?" he asked abruptly.

"Oh, no! But sometimes I--waddle for the fun of it. Under advice,"
David smiled at Esther, "of a very good fairy."

Jonathan did not understand that saying, but he thought from her color
he could guess the fairy's name.

"And very good advice, too. Have you done any other ecclesiastical
work?"

"Why, that," laughed David, "I used to think was my mission in life."

"Is there anything else you could show us?"

"I have a set of drawings I submitted to St. Christopher's last spring.
They're all that escaped a general destruction when I took down my
shingle."

David got the plans from a closet, unrolled them and placed the
illustrative sketches before his visitors. Jonathan studied these
drawings, too, very carefully.

"St. Christopher's, you say?" he said at last. "But I don't
understand. I happen to have seen the plans they accepted. I don't
know very much about architecture technically, but I should say yours
are better--manifestly better. Am I right?"

"They weren't what St. Christopher's wanted."

"But they are better, aren't they?"

"I think they are," said David quietly.

"But I believe I like the new idea even better. Am I right again?"

"I suppose it is better in a way. It's less pretentious and
spectacular, but has more warmth--more meaning, I suppose."

David tried to speak casually, but excitement was mounting. He caught
up the new sketches and compared them eagerly with the old, forgetting
for the moment what St. Christopher's had meant to him. And he saw the
new idea as he had not seen it before.

"It _is_ better," he muttered. "I--I hadn't realized."

"David!" It was hard to believe that Jonathan could be so stern. "You
are a fraud. You came to me under false pretenses. You gave me to
believe that you had been a failure."

"I was."

"You know better than that. Any man who can work out such things--!
For a very little I would give you your discharge this moment."

"But I beg of you--Mr. Radbourne, you don't know what my position means
to me--"

"I didn't mean that seriously, of course. But you ought to be back in
your own work. Why did you ever leave it?"

"Becau