"How do you do, Mr. Griffin. I am delighted to see you again, and so soon after our first meeting."
Two days had elapsed since the unpleasant incident at the rectory, and Mark, engrossed in thoughts by no means in harmony with the peaceful country through which he wandered, was taken unawares. He turned sharply. A big automobile had stopped near him and from it leaned the young Bishop, hand outstretched.
Mark hurried forward. "I am glad to see Your Lordship again. You are still traveling?" He had retained no pleasant recollections of the dignitary, and, as he shook the extended hand, was rather surprised to realize that he felt not a little pleased by the unexpected encounter.
"I am still traveling--Confirmation tours all this season. Are you going far, Mr. Griffin?"
"I am merely walking, without goal."
"Then come in with me. I am on my way to a little parish ten miles farther on. I want to chat. My secretary went on ahead by train, to 'prepare the way,' as it were. I will send the car back with you. Won't you come?" The tone of the Bishop's voice indicated an earnest desire that the invitation be accepted.
Mark hesitated but a moment. "I thank Your Lordship. I will gladly go with you on such pleasant terms." He entered the car and, sinking into its soft cushions, suddenly awakened to the fact that he had tramped far, and was tired.
The Bishop took up the conversation.
"You are thoroughly British, Mr. Griffin, or you would not have said 'Your Lordship.' The bishops in England are all addressed in that way, are they not?"
"Of course, and here also. Did I not hear Father Murray--"
"Oh, Father Murray is quite different. He is a convert, and rather inclined to be punctilious. Then, too, he is from England. In America the best we get as a rule is just plain 'Bishop.' One of your own kind of Bishops--an Episcopalian--I knew him well and a charming man he was--told me that in England he was 'My Lorded' and 'Your Lordshiped' everywhere, until he had gotten quite used to the dignity of it. But when he stepped on the dock at New York, one of his lay intimates took all the pomposity out of him by a sound slap on the back and the greeting, 'Hello, Bish, home again?'"
"It was very American, that," said Mark. "We wouldn't understand it."
"But we do. I wouldn't want anyone to go quite that far, of course. I have nerves. But I confess I rather like the possibility of it--so long as it stays a possibility only. We Yankees are a friendly lot, but not at all irreverent. A bishop has to be 'right' on the manhood side as well as on the side of his office. That's the way we look at it."