"We are not troubled with bishops, nor apostolic successions," interrupted Bulgin: "High and Low Church don't trouble us.—Our deacons want a minister; they call him and pay him. Now, if our church admitted of a bishop, I think that—" he put his thumbs in the arm-holes of his vest, and surveyed his heavy limbs with great complacency, "that your humble servant would make a—"
"Bishop?" cried Herman, with a laugh.
"Ay, and a capital bishop, too, if all be true that these Low Church fellows say of the Bishop of your church. I am a man of feeling, eh, my boy?"
This was a home thrust. Notwithstanding his intimacy with Bulgin, Herman did not regard him as a real priest of the church, but only as the called teacher of a congregation. Therefore, he felt the allusion to his bishop the more heavily.
"You were speaking of an adventure?" suggested Herman, anxious to change the subject: "What about it?"
Bulgin flung back his head, and burst into a roar of laughter.
"I'm laughing at my adventure, not at you, my dear Herman. Just imagine my case. I have a patient on my hands, who is rich, crippled with a dozen diseases, and troubled in his mind on some doctrinal point. In the morning I visit the old gentleman, and after hearing afresh the list of his diseases, I soothe him on the doctrinal point.—Soothe him, and quote the Fathers, and fire him up with a word or two about the Pope. And in the afternoon—" he closed one eye, and looked at Herman in such a manner, that the latter could not avoid a burst of laughter, "in the afternoon, while the old man is asleep, I visit his wife,—young and handsome, and such a love of a woman—and soothe her mind on another doctrinal point. Sometimes my lessons are prolonged until evening, and—ha, ha!—I have my hands full, I assure you."
"You called there to-night, on your way home?" asked Herman, with a smile.
"Just to see if the old gentleman was better, and,—but wait a moment," he rose from his chair, and hurried into the shadows of the room, turned one of the recesses, between the western windows. There he remained, until Herman grew impatient.
"What are you doing," he exclaimed, and as he spoke, Bulgin returned toward the light, "what is this!" and his eyes opened with a wondering stare.