The bishop was very kind and amiable to Bob. Some people say that bishops are always kind and good to people who will be dukes by and by. One never knows what a duke can do for one later, and, of course, a bishop wants to be an archbishop. That is only natural: even a cardinal wants to be Pope, although he almost always says he is sorry he became one when he finds himself at the end of his tether. The bishop was a human being, but a nice one, and he really liked Bob, who suggested youth and strength and the future, all of them agreeable things to those who are not young and see their future behind them. So he talked to Bob almost as if he was one of the Bench of Bishops. He was familiar and jovial, and told some good stories of other bishops and even one of an archbishop. And he suggested to Bob that he rather wanted to see what a motor-car was like. "There is a prejudice against them here," said the bishop. "Perhaps a natural prejudice among those who own chickens and dogs and children. But Providence works in a mysterious way, and I should be the last to hasten to blame even the gentleman known as a road hog. I begin to perceive an unwonted sprightliness in the villagers as the elimination of the unfit, the rheumatic, the undecided, and the foolish proceeds apace. A young man, who told me that he had in the course of his career as an owner of cars killed nearly a thousand dogs, two thousand five hundred fowls, several aged persons, some idiots, and a policeman, said that he noticed nowadays an air of bright alertness in his immediate neighbourhood which was at once a pleasure and an encouragement. He asserted that the dogs who remained were of a higher type of intellect than the others; and he said that even the fowls now stood sideways in the road and used their natural advantage of looking both ways at once. There was, too, a great improvement in village children and even in policemen. Oh, yes, I think much may be said for the motor-car." "I should very much like to take you out in one, my lord," said Bob. The bishop smiled graciously. "You shall, my boy, as soon as this matter of Penelope is settled. I shall greatly enjoy passing rapidly through the country. I think of buying one for purposes of my pastoral visitations. Perhaps I may wake up some of my more somnolent clergy. I may even raise their general intellectual average, which is low, really low." Bob’s chauffeur put up at the Angel, but Bob himself had a bed in the palace, and dined in state with the bishop and Bradstock. They discussed Penelope all dinner-time, even before Ridley, for, as the bishop explained, Ridley took no interest in anything whatever but wine.