"But what are we to do ?" "That I am sure I don't know, my dearest auntie," said Troubridge, "but I am here, and my horse too, ready to go any amount of errands." "I see no way," said Miss Thornton, "but to write to the Bishop." "And I see no way else," said Tom, "unless you like to dress me up as a parson, and see if I would do." Miss Thornton wrote to the Bishop, with whom she had some acquaintance, and told him how her brother had been struck down with paralysis, and that the parish was unprovided for; that if he would send any gentleman he approved of, she would gladly receive him at Drumston.
Armed with this letter, Tom found himself, for the first time in his life, in an episcopal palace.

A sleek servant in black opened the door with cat-like tread, and admitted him into a dark, warm hall; and on Tom's saying, in a hoarse whisper, as if he was in church, that he had brought a note of importance, and would wait for an answer, the man glided away, and disappeared through a spring-door, which swung to behind him.

Tom thought it would have banged, but it didn't.

Bishops' doors never bang.
Tom had a great awe for your peers spiritual.

He could get on well enough with a peer temporal, particularly if that proud aristocrat happened to be in want of a horse; but a bishop was quite another matter.
So he sat rather uncomfortable in the dark, warm hall, listening to such dull sounds as could be heard in the gloomy mansion.