“I’m afraid we may be late for the luncheon,” George ventured.

The bishop looked at him blandly, leaning forward, and replied, after holding his mouth open for a moment: 

“They will not begin without us.  I say grace.”  His antique eye twinkled.

After this George liked him, and understood that he was really a bishop.

In the immense hubbub of the lower hall the bishop was seized upon by officials, and conducted to a chair a few places to the right of His Worship the Mayor.  Though there was considerable disorder and confusion (doubtless owing to the absence of Alderman Soulter, who had held all the strings in his hand) everybody agreed that the luncheon scene in the lower hall was magnificent.  The Mayor, in his high chair and in his heavy chain and glittering robe, ruled in the centre of the principal table, from which lesser tables ran at right angles.  The Aldermen and Councillors, also chained and robed, well sustained the brilliance of the Mayor, and the ceremonial officials of the city surpassed both Mayor and Council in grandeur.  Sundry peers and M.P.’s and illustrious capitalists enhanced the array of renown, and the bishop was rivalled by priestly dignitaries scarcely less grandiose than himself.  And then there were the women.  The women had been let in.  During ten years of familiarity with the city’s life George had hardly spoken to a woman, except Mr. Soulter’s Scotch half-sister.  The men lived a life of their own, which often extended to the evenings, and very many of them when mentioning women employed a peculiar tone.  But now the women were disclosed in bulk, and the display startled George.  He suddenly saw all the city fathers and their sons in a new light.

The bishop had his appointed chair, with a fine feminine hat on either side of him, but George could not find that any particular chair had been appointed to himself.  Eventually he saw an empty chair in the middle of a row of men at the right-hand transverse table, and he took it.  He had expected, as the sole artistic creator of the town hall whose completion the gathering celebrated, to be the object of a great deal of curiosity at the luncheon.  But in this expectation he was deceived.  If any curiosity concerning him existed, it was admirably concealed.  The authorities, however, had not entirely forgotten him, for the Town Clerk that morning had told him that he must reply to the toast of his health.  He had protested against the shortness of the notice, whereupon the Town Clerk had said casually that a few words would suffice—­anything, in fact, and had hastened off.  George was now getting nervous.  He was afraid of hearing his own voice in that long, low interior which he had made.  He had no desire to eat.  He felt tired.  Still, his case was less acute than it would have been had the august personage originally hoped for attended the luncheon.  The august personage had not attended on account of an objection, apropos