children had been shown, all greatly impressed by the canonicals. Every
one had been extremely respectful.

He had been reconciling the people and blessing them and calling them
his "sheep" and his "little children."

But all this was so different.

Neither party resembled sheep or little children in the least degree. .

The labour leader became impatient with the ritualistic controversy; he
set his tea-cup aside out of danger and leant across the corner of the
table to the bishop and spoke in a sawing undertone. "You see," he said,
"the church does not talk our language. I doubt if it understands our
language. I doubt if we understand clearly where we are ourselves. These
things have to be fought out and hammered out. It's a big dusty dirty
noisy job. It may be a bloody job before it's through. You can't
suddenly call a halt in the middle of the scrap and have a sort of
millennium just because you want it....

"Of course if the church had a plan," he said, "if it had a proposal to
make, if it had anything more than a few pious palliatives to suggest,
that might be different. But has it?"

The bishop had a bankrupt feeling. On the spur of the moment he could
say no more than: "It offers its mediation."

(7)