“I haven’t actually worked out all the details,” I said. “I am thinking more of the plan in its broad outlines. After all, the Archdeacon isn’t married. We can’t get over that. If that text of First Timothy is really binding—I don’t myself know whether it is or not, but I’m inclined to take Selby-Harrison’s word for it that it is. He’s in the Divinity School and has been making a special study of the subject. If he’s right, there’s no use our electing the Archdeacon and then having the Local Government Board coming down on us afterward for appointing an unqualified man. You remember the fuss they made when the Urban District Council took on a cookery instructress who hadn’t got her diploma.”
“That wasn’t the Local Government Board. It was the Department of Agriculture. But in any case neither the one nor the other of them has anything in the world to do with bishops.”
“Don’t you be too sure of that. I expect you’ll find they have if you appoint a man who isn’t properly qualified, and the law on the subject is perfectly plain.”
“Rot! Lots of bishops aren’t married. Texts of that sort never mean what they seem to mean.”
“What’s the good of running risks,” I said, “when the remedy is in our own hands? I don’t see that the Archdeacon could do better than Miss Battersby. She’s wonderfully sympathetic.”
“You’d better go and tell him so yourself.”
“I would, I’d go like a shot, only most unluckily he’s got it into his head that I’ve taken to drink. He might think, just at first, that I wasn’t quite myself if I went to him with a suggestion of that sort.”
“There’d be some excuse for him if he did,” said Thormanby.
“Whereas, if you, who have always been strictly temperate——”
“I didn’t send for you,” said Thormanby, “to stand there talking like a born fool. What I want you to do——”