"I must tell you what I came for, Coupland. Of course I wanted to find how you were, and take back word to Lizarann." Mr. Taylor has to speak quickly. "But I wanted to ask something of you." "Give it a name, master!" "I wanted to ask your consent to our keeping her--I should say to Miss Fossett keeping her--at the School till you are about again. She shall be well cared for. I know I am asking you to trust...." He stopped; Jim's lips were moving. "You're the School-lady's brother, belike?" "Not quite, but that sort of thing! Her brother and I were at College together. He is doing my work in the country, and I am doing his at St. Vulgate's at Clapham." "That parson-gentleman--he'd be her brother. Him I heard cough?" For the brother and sister, interested in Lizarann, had visited Tallack Street, and interviewed Jim. "Him you heard cough. That's it!" "But _he_ can't do no work, poor chap!--not work in the country." "My work in the country is the same as his in London. Only not so hard. And the country air does his cough good." "Oh, master!--ye never mean to say _you're_ a parson!" Jim's voice rises with the poignancy of his disappointment. To him, every cleric is the Rev. Wilkinson Wilkins, the spiritual adviser of Aunt Stingy. "I'm not a very bad one, Coupland. At least, I hope not." There is humility in the speaker's tone, and recognition of the aggressive and objectionable character of Cures of Souls, but a germ of a good-humoured laugh buried in it. The seven minutes are near their end, and the nurse, considered as a rustle, is increasing. She means action in a moment. "I'll be your bail for that, master." But Jim cannot quite conceal his disappointment. He had formed such a high ideal of his visitor. Still, he can and does show his faith in him by spending the rest of his available speech-strength on a few words of gratitude to Lizarann's protectors, and assenting without conditions to the proposed arrangement. But when will he be "about again"? The nurse throws eight weeks, somehow, into her expression, without speech, and the forgiven parson interprets for the blind man's hearing. "Quite a month, Coupland. But I will bring your little girl to see you the moment the doctors will allow me. Now, good-bye!"