George A. Birmingham

“ Willoughby, "when they leave you a curate, Mr. Meldon, and you no more than a parish priest, Father Mulcrone?"
"I'd be well off if I was that itself. It's a C.C. I am, and so far as I know it's a C.C. I'm likely to remain."
"You ought," said Mr. Willoughby, "to be bishops at least, both of you. If I had the arranging of these things you'd be archbishops. Why aren't you?"
"I haven't reached the canonical age," said Meldon. "You can't be a bishop till you're thirty. I've three years more to wait." ”

“ Mr. Willoughby looked from one clergyman to the other and laughed heartily. Higginbotham giggled convulsively in a corner. Neither of the clergymen even smiled. With perfectly grave faces, in tones which would have suited a scientific lecture, they narrated absurdity after absurdity. It was Meldon who reached the climax, who told a story so monstrously improbable that Father Mulcrone gave up the attempt to better it.
"For a young man," said the priest, "and I wouldn't say you were more than seven-and-twenty——"
"I'll be that in three weeks, if I live so long," said Meldon. ”

“ I don't see that it's any use to you if you don't so much as buy yourself a decent suit of clothes and spend sixpence on getting your hair cut. It's a shame for a rich man like you to be going about the way you are."
"What good would grand clothes be to the likes of me?"
"I'm beginning to understand things a bit," said Meldon, whose thoughts had passed away from the use to be made of the money. "I see the reason now why you wouldn't give up the house and land to Higginbotham. You're certainly no fool. ”