"Help you to help our church?" blankly repeated the Bishop. The unexpected always reduces the expectant kind to a mere echo.
"Exactly!" And H. R. nodded congratulatorily. "Exactly! In order that we may stop losing ground!"
There were so many ways in which this young man's words might be taken that his mission remained an exasperating mystery. But the Bishop smiled with the tolerance of undyspeptic age toward over-enthusiastic youth and said kindly:
"Pardon me, but—"
"Pardon me," interrupted H. R., "but since it is only the Roman Catholics who are growing—"
"Our figures—" interjected the Bishop, firmly.
"Ah yes, figures of speech. Don't apply to our church. The reason is that the Catholics leave out the possessive pronoun. They never say their church any more than they say their God. Now, why did we build our huge Cathedral?"
The Bishop stared at H. R. in astonishment. Then he answered, austerely, confining himself to the last question:
"In order to glorify—"
"Excuse me. There already existed the Himalayas. The real object of building cathedrals hollow, I take it, is to fill 'em with the flesh of living people. Otherwise we would have made sarcophagi. We Protestants don't bequeath our faith to our posterity; only our pews. They are to-day empty. Hence my business. I, Bishop Phillipson, am a People-Getter."