Being a parson, and tacitly on honour to Sir John, he might have been expected to pass on his way without stopping; but Helen's hand was already stretched out over the gate. He could but shake it.
"You are not looking well," he said after a moment's silence. "I am sorry to see it."
What with his unexpected presence, and what with her mind's general discomfort, Helen burst into tears. Mr. Leafchild kept her hand in his.
"I have a bad headache to-day," said Helen, by way of excuse for her tears. "It has been gloomy weather lately."
"Gloomy within and without," he assented, giving a meaning to her words that she had not meant to imply. "But in every cloud, you know, however dark it may be, there is always a silver lining."
"We can't always see it," returned Helen, drying her tears.
"No; we very often cannot. But we may trust that it is there--and be patient."
"I think it sometimes happens that we never see it--that all is gloomy to the end, the end of life. What then?"
"Then we may be sure that it is best for us it should be so. God directs all things."
Helen sighed: she had not learnt the love and faith and submission that made up the sum of Mr. Leafchild's life, bringing into it so strange a peace.
"Is it true that you are going to leave?" she asked. "We heard it mentioned."
"Yes: when I shall be fully ordained. Mr. Singleton has to take his nephew. It was an old promise--that he should come to him for his first year, just as I have. I think I shall go to Worcester."
"I have been offered a curacy there by one of the minor canons whose living is in the town, and I feel inclined to take it. The parish is large and has a good many of the very poor in it."
Helen made a face. "But would you like that? You might be frightfully overworked."
"It is what I should like. As to the work--it is done for our Master."
He shook hands with her again, and left, the cheery smile still on his face, the thoughtful light in his steadfast eyes. And never a word of love, you see, had passed.
It was, I take it, about a fortnight after this, that there went walking one afternoon to Whitney Hall, a tall, portly, defiant-looking gentleman in gold-rimmed spectacles and a laced-up clerical hat. By the way he turned his head here and there, and threw his shoulders about as he strode along, you might have taken him for a bishop at least, instead of a canon--but canons in those days were a great deal more self-important than bishops are in these. It was the Reverend Dr. Leafchild. A real canon was he, a great man in his own cathedral, and growing rich on his share of its substantial revenues: your honorary canons with their empty title and non-stipends had not sprung into fashion then. In his pompous manner, and he had been born pompous, Dr. Leafchild asked to see Sir John Whitney.