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Page 2
"Did you tie that string across the path?"
"Yes," The shining head nodded. "Too bad you didn't fell 'way down. I'm
sorry. But you kicked awf'ly."
"Oh! I did, did I?" asked the Bishop. "You're an unrepentant young
sinner. Suppose I'd broken my leg?"
The head nodded again. "Oh, we'd have patzed you up," she said
cheerfully. "Don't worry. Trust in God."
The Bishop jumped. "My child," he said, "who says that to you?"
"Aunt Basha." The innocent eyes faced him without a sign of
embarrassment. "Aunt Basha's my old black mammy. Do you know her? All
her name's longer'n that. I can say it." Then with careful, slow
enunciation, "Bathsheba Salina Mosina Angelica Preston."
"Is that your little bit of name too?" the Bishop asked, "Are you a
Preston?"
"Why, of course." The child opened her gray eyes wide. "Don't you know
my name? I'm Eleanor. Eleanor Gray Preston."
For a moment again the locust had it all to himself. High and insistent,
his steady note sounded across the hot, still world. The Bishop looked
down at the gray eyes gazing upward wonderingly, and through a mist of
years other eyes smiled at him. Eleanor Gray--the world is small, the
life of it persistent; generations repeat themselves, and each is young
but once. He put his hand under the child's chin and turned up the baby
face.
"Ah!" said he--if that may stand for the sound that stood for the
Bishop's reverie. "Ah! Whom were you named for, Eleanor Gray?"
"For my own muvver." Eleanor wriggled her chin from the big hand and
looked at him with dignity. She did not like to be touched by
strangers. Again the voices stopped and the locust sang two notes and
stopped also, as if suddenly awed.
"Your mother," repeated the Bishop, "your mother! I hope you are worthy
of the name."
"Yes, I am," said Eleanor heartily. "Bug's on your shoulder, Bishop! For
de Lawd's sake!" she squealed excitedly, in delicious high notes that a
prima donna might envy; then caught the fat grasshopper from the black
clerical coat, and stood holding it, lips compressed and the joy of
adventure dancing in her eyes. The Bishop took out his watch and looked
at it, as Eleanor, her soul on the grasshopper, opened her fist and
flung its squirming contents, with delicious horror, yards away. Half an
hour yet to service and only five minutes' walk to the little church of
Saint Peter's-by-the-Sea.
"Will you sit down and talk to me, Eleanor Gray?" he asked, gravely.
"Oh, yes, if there's time," assented Eleanor, "but you mustn't be late
to church, Bishop. That's naughty."
"I think there's time. How do you know who I am, Eleanor?"
"Dick told me."
The Bishop had walked away from the throbbing sunshine into the
green-black shadows of a tree, and seated himself with a boyish
lightness in piquant contrast with his gray-haired dignity--a lightness
that meant athletic years. Eleanor bent down the branch of a great bush
that faced him and sat on it as if a bird had poised there. She smiled
as their eyes met, and began to hum an air softly. The startled Bishop
slowly made out a likeness to the words of the old hymn that begins
Am I a soldier of the Cross,
A follower of the Lamb?
Sweetly and reverently she sang it, over and over, with a difference.
Am I shoulder of a hoss,
A quarter of a lamb?
sang Eleanor.
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