In his robes--cardinal, and white, and violet--the good Bishop stood in
full sunlight, speaking to the crippled and the air-raid children in
their drilled rows under the shade of the doves' wall; and one felt far
from this age, as if one had strayed back into that time when the
builders of the old house laid slow brick on brick, wetting their
whistles on mead, and knowing not tobacco.

And then, out by the chapel porch moved three forms in blue, with red
neckties, and we were again in this new age, watching the faces of those
listening children. The good Bishop was making them feel that he was
happy in their presence, and that made them happy in his. For the great
thing about life is the going-out of friendliness from being to being.
And if a place be beautiful, and friendliness ever on the peace-path
there, what more can we desire? And yet--how ironical this place of
healing, this beautiful "Heritage!" Verily a heritage of our modern
civilisation which makes all this healing necessary! If life were the
offspring of friendliness and beauty's long companionship, there would
be no crippled children, no air-raid children, none of those good
fellows in blue with red ties and maimed limbs; and the colony to which
the Bishop spoke, standing grey-headed in the sun, would be dissolved.
Friendliness seems so natural, beauty so appropriate to this earth! But
in this torn world they are as fugitives who nest together here and
there. Yet stumbling by chance on their dove-cotes and fluttering
happiness, one makes a little golden note, which does not fade off the
tablet.

* * * * *

How entrancing it is to look at a number of faces never seen before--and
how exasperating!--stamped coins of lives quite separate, quite
different from every other; masks pallid, sunburned, smooth, or
crumpled, to peep behind which one longs, as a lover looking for his
lady at carnival, or a man aching at summer beauty which he cannot quite
fathom and possess. If one had a thousand lives, and time to know and
sympathy to understand the heart of every creature met with, one would
want--a million! May life make us all intuitive, strip away
self-consciousness, and give us sunshine and unknown faces!

What were they all feeling and thinking--those little cripples doing
their drill on crutches; those air-raid waifs swelling their Cockney
chests, rising on their toes, puffing their cheeks out in anxiety to do
their best; th