I told my mother that night that I had studied the situation long enough and was fully determined to cast my vote for the Archdeacon.
“He is thoroughly well fitted to be a bishop,” I said. “He told me to-day that my knowledge of foreign affairs would be most valuable to the government whenever questions of imperial policy turned up.”
My mother seemed a little puzzled.
“What has that got to do with the bishopric?” she asked.
“The remark,” I said, “shows me the kind of man the Archdeacon is. No one who was not full of suave dignity and sympathetic diplomacy could have said a thing like that. What more do you want in a bishop?”
“A great deal more,” said my mother, who takes these church questions seriously.
“He also undertook,” I said, “to keep Lalage in her place once she is put there.”
“If he does that——”
“I quite agree with you. If he does that he ought to be a bishop, or a Metropolitan, if not a Patriarch. That’s why I’m going to vote for him.”