isn’t going to spread like a tree—­and I hoped it might!  But it’s no good being disappointed—­that’s childish—­you can’t do what you mean to do in this world, only what you are meant to do.  I expect the weakness has been that I meddle too much—­I don’t leave things alone enough.  I trust too much to myself, and not enough to God.  It’s been too much a case of “See me do it!”—­as the children say.’”

“What did you say?” I said.

“Nothing at all,” said Barthrop; “that’s where I fail.  I can’t rise to an emergency.  I murmured something about our all being very grateful to him—­it was awfully flat!  If I could but have told him how I cared for him, and how splendid he had always been!  But those perfectly true, sincere, fine things are just what one can’t say, unless one has it all written down on paper.  I wish he would see a doctor, or go away for a bit; but I can’t advise him to do that—­he hates a fuss about anything, and most of all about health.  He says you ought never to tell people how you are feeling, because they have to pretend to be interested!”

I smiled at this, and said, “I don’t think there really is much the matter!  People can’t be always at the top of their game, and he takes a lot out of himself, of course.  He’s always giving out!”

“He is indeed,” said Barthrop; “but I won’t say more now.  I feel better for having told you.  Just you keep your eyes open—­but, for Heaven’s sake, don’t watch him—­you know how sharp he is.”

I went off a little depressed by the talk, because it seemed so impossible to connect anything but buoyant health with Father Payne.  I did not see him at breakfast, but he came in to lunch; and I saw at once that there was something amiss with him.  He ate little, and he looked tired.  However, as I rose to go—­we did not, as I have said, talk at lunch—­he just beckoned to me, and pointed with his finger in the direction of his room.  It was a well-known gesture if he wanted to speak to one.  I went there, and stood before the fire surveying the room, which looked unwontedly tidy, the table being almost free from books and papers.  But there lay a long folded folio sheet on the table, a legal document, and it gave me a chill to see the word Will on the top of it.  Father Payne came in a moment later with a smile.  Then somehow divining, as he so often did, exactly what had happened, he said, as if answering an unspoken question, “Yes, that’s my will!  I have been, in fact, making it.  It’s a wholesome occupation for an elderly man.  But I only wanted to know if you would come for a stroll?  Yes?  That’s all right!  You are sure I’m not interfering with any arrangement?”