He stood it up on his desk and studied the
spirited will-o'-the-wisp face! Then he turned away sadly and shook his
head. She would not understand. Not yet! Some time, when he had told her
about the Presence--but not yet! She could not understand because she
had not seen for herself.
Tennelly and his uncle went down-town in the morning and took lunch
together. Courtland was to meet them at the factory at three o'clock,
but somehow he missed them. Perhaps it was intention. Courtland went
early. He wanted to see things for himself; went alone first. Afterward
he could go the rounds to satisfy Mr. Thomas, but first he would see it
alone.
Then, after all, it was the Rev. Robert Burns who met him at the door
and took him through the factory, bent on seeing some parishioner on an
errand of love. And there was that strange sense of the Presence having
been there before them, walking about among the machinery, looking at
the tired face of one, sorrowing over the wrinkles in another forehead,
pitying the weary hands that toiled, blessing the faithful! It reminded
him of the morgue in that. For a minute he began to think that if the
Presence was here in this peculiar sense, then, of course, it was an
indication that he was needed here to work for these people, as Uncle
Ramsey had tried with strange worldly wisdom to make him understand. But
then, suddenly, he caught a glimpse of the face of the little minister,
white under its freckles, with a righteous wrath as he fixed his gaze
sternly on the door at the end of the long room.
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