‘Bishop,’ said the lady, as his lordship sat himself down, ‘don’t sit on that sofa, if you please; it is to be kept separate for a lady.’

The bishop jumped up and seated himself on a cane–bottomed chair. ‘A lady?’ he inquired meekly; ‘do you mean one particular lady, my dear?’

‘Yes, bishop, one particular lady,’ said his wife, disdaining to explain.

‘She has got no legs, papa,’ said the youngest daughter, tittering.

‘No legs!’ said the bishop, opening his eyes.

‘Nonsense, Netta, what stuff you talk,’ said Olivia. ‘She has got legs, but she can’t use them. She has always to be kept lying down, and three or four men carry her about everywhere.’

‘Laws, how odd!’ said Augusta. ‘Always carried about by four men! I’m quite sure I wouldn’t like it. Am I right behind, mama? I feel as if I was open;’ and she turned her back to her anxious parent.

‘Open! To be sure you are,’ said she, ‘and a yard of petticoat strings hanging out. I don’t know why I pay such high wages to Mrs Richards, if she can’t take the trouble to see whether or no you are fit to be looked at,’ and Mrs Proudie poked the strings here, and twitched the dress there, and gave her daughter a shove and a shake, and then pronounced it all right.

‘But,’ rejoined the bishop, who was dying with curiosity about the mysterious lady and her legs, ‘who is it that is to have the sofa? What is her name, Netta?’

A thundering rap at the front door interrupted the conversation. Mrs Proudie stood up and shook herself gently, and touched her cap on each side as she looked in the mirror. Each of the girls stood on tiptoe, and re–arranged the bows on their bosoms; and Mr Slope rushed up stairs three steps at a time.

‘But who is it, Netta?’ whispered the bishop to his youngest daughter.

‘La Signora Madeline Vesey Neroni,’ whispered back the daughter; ‘and mind you don’t let any one sit upon the sofa.’

‘La Signora Madeline Vicinironi!’ muttered, to himself, the bewildered prelate. Had he been told that the Begum of Oude was to be there, or Queen Pomara of the Western Isles, he could not have been more astonished. La Signora Madeline Vicinironi, who, having no legs to stand on, had bespoken a sofa in his drawing–room!—who could she be? He however could now make no further inquiry, as Dr and Mrs Stanhope were announced. They had been sent on out of the way a little before the time, in order that the signora might have plenty of time to get herself conveniently packed into the carriage.

The bishop was all smiles for the prebendary’s wife, and the bishop’s wife was all smiles for the prebendary. Mr Slope was presented, and was delighted to make the acquaintance of one of whom he had heard so much. The doctor bowed very low, and then looked as though he could not return the compliment as regarded Mr Slope, of whom, indeed, he had heard nothing. The doctor, in spite of his long absence, knew an English gentleman when he saw him.

And then the guests came in shoals; Mr and Mrs Quiverful and their three grown daughters. Mr and Mrs Chadwick and their three daughters. The burly chancellor and his wife and clerical son from Oxford. The meagre little doctor without encumbrance. Mr Harding with Eleanor and Miss Bold. The dean leaning on a gaunt spinster, his only child now living with him, a lady very learned in stones, ferns, plants, and vermin, and who had written a book about petals. A wonderful woman in her way was Miss Trefoil. Mr Finnie, the attorney, with his wife, was to be seen, much to the dismay of many who had never met him in a drawing–room before. The five Barchester doctors were all there, and old Scalpen, the retired apothecary and toothdrawer, who was first taught to consider himself as belonging to the higher orders