THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [rising, disarmed] Sit down, Mr—­er?

HASLAM.  Haslam.

THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN.  Mr Haslam.

THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN [rising and offering him the stool] Sit down. [He retreats towards the Chippendale chairs].

HASLAM [sitting down on the stool] Thanks awfully.

THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [resuming his seat] This is my brother Conrad, Professor of Biology at Jarrowfields University:  Dr. Conrad Barnabas.  My name is Franklyn:  Franklyn Barnabas.  I was in the Church myself for some years.

HASLAM [sympathizing] Yes:  one cant help it.  If theres a living in the family, or one’s Governor knows a patron, one gets shoved into the Church by one’s parents.

CONRAD [sitting down on the furthest Chippendale with a snort of amusement] Mp!

FRANKLYN.  One gets shoved out of it, sometimes, by one’s conscience.

HASLAM.  Oh yes; but where is a chap like me to go?  I’m afraid I’m not intellectual enough to split straws when theres a job in front of me, and nothing better for me to do.  I daresay the Church was a bit thick for you; but it’s good enough for me.  It will last my time, anyhow [he laughs good-humoredly].

FRANKLYN [with renewed energy] There again!  You see, Con.  It will last his time.  Life is too short for men to take it seriously.

HASLAM.  Thats a way of looking at it, certainly.

FRANKLYN.  I was not shoved into the Church, Mr Haslam:  I felt it to be my vocation to walk with God, like Enoch.  After twenty years of it I realized that I was walking with my own ignorance and self-conceit, and that I was not within a hundred and fifty years of the experience and wisdom I was pretending to.

HASLAM.  Now I come to think of it, old Methuselah must have had to think twice before he took on anything for life.  If I thought I was going to live nine hundred and sixty years, I don’t think I should stay in the Church.

FRANKLYN.  If men lived even a third of that time, the Church would be very different from the thing it is.

CONRAD.  If I could count on nine hundred and sixty years I could make myself a real biologist, instead of what I am now:  a child trying to walk.  Are you sure you might not become a good clergyman if you had a few centuries to do it in?

HASLAM.  Oh, theres nothing much the matter with me:  it’s quite easy to be a decent parson.  It’s the Church that chokes me off.  I couldnt stick it for nine hundred years.  I should chuck it.  You know, sometimes, when the bishop, who is the most priceless of fossils, lets off something more than usually out-of-date, the bird starts in my garden.

FRANKLYN.  The bird?

HASLAM.  Oh yes.  Theres a bird there that keeps on singing ’Stick it or chuck it:  stick it or chuck it’—­just like that—­for an hour on end in the spring.  I wish my father had found some other shop for me.