The Bishop woke up. He showed more alertness than he had hitherto displayed.
"You promised him that his lease should be renewed--the lease of 'The Rose and Crown'?"
"I did. I thought it better that I should do so than that such a story should be told."
"Story? What story?"
The Dean, before he answered, indulged himself with a pause for consideration.
"My lord, if any word which I may utter seems lacking in respect, as coming from me to you, I entreat your pardon. My lord, when I heard that, after preaching a sermon, and so grand a sermon, upon total abstinence, you passed straight from the cathedral pulpit to the bar of a common public-house, and there drank so large a quantity of wine that, in the temporary forgetfulness which it occasioned, you left the sermon itself behind you in the bar, I felt that it were better that I should promise almost anything than that such a story should be told."
As he listened the Bishop's countenance underwent a variety of changes. When the Dean had finished the Bishop dropped into a chair, and--laughed. Not a genteel simper, but a loud and a long guffaw. The Dean felt that he could not endure such levity even from a bishop--his own bishop, too.
"My lord, in such a matter you may see occasion for merriment, but if you could have seen, at the Deanery, the faces of the cathedral clergy as I told to them the story--"
"Pettifer, what do you mean?"
Springing to his feet, the Bishop grasped the speaker by the arm. The Dean was startled.