receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed.’ He told them that the house of theirs to which he alluded was this their church in which he now addressed them for the first time; that their most welcome and proper manner of bidding him God speed would be their patient obedience to this teaching of the gospel; but that he could put forward no claim to such conduct on their part unless he taught them the great Christian doctrine of works and faith combined. On this he enlarged, but not very amply, and after twenty minutes succeeded in sending his new friends home to their baked mutton and pudding well pleased with their new minister.

Then came the lunch at Ullathorne. As soon as they were in the hall Miss Thorne took Mr Arabin’s hand, and assured him that she received him into her house, into the temple, she said, in which she worshipped, and bade him God speed with all her heart. Mr Arabin was touched, and squeezed the spinster’s hand without uttering a word in reply. Then Mr Thorne expressed a hope that Mr Arabin found the church easy to fill, and Mr Arabin having replied that he had no doubt he should do so as soon as he had learnt to pitch his voice to the building, they all sat down to the good things before them.

Miss Thorne took special care of Mrs Bold. Eleanor still wore her widow’s weeds, and therefore had about her that air of grave and sad maternity which is the lot of recent widows. This opened the soft heart of Miss Thorne, and made her look on her young guest as though too much could not be done for her. She heaped chicken and ham upon her plate, and poured out for her a full bumper of port wine. When Eleanor, who was not sorry to get it, had drunk a little of it, Miss Thorne at once essayed to fill it again. To this Eleanor objected, but in vain. Miss Thorne winked and nodded and whispered, saying that it was the proper thing and must be done, and that she knew all about it; and so she desired Mrs Bold to drink it up, and mind any body.

‘It is your duty, you know, to support yourself,’ she said into the ear of the young mother; ‘there’s more than yourself depending on it;’ and thus she coshered up Eleanor with cold fowl and port wine. How it is that poor men’s wives, who have no cold fowl and port wine on which to be coshered up, nurse their children without difficulty, whereas the wives of rich men, who eat and drink everything that is good, cannot do so, we will for the present leave to the doctors and mothers to settle between them.

And then Miss Thorne was great about teeth. Little Johnny Bold had been troubled for the last few days with his first incipient masticator, and with that freemasonry which exists between ladies, Miss Thorne became aware of the fact before Eleanor had half finished her wing. The old lady prescribed at once a receipt which had been much in vogue in the young days of her grandmother, and warned Eleanor with solemn voice against the fallacies of modern medicine.

‘Take his coral, my dear,’ said she, ‘and rub it well with carrot–juice; rub it till the juice dries on it, and then give it to him to play with—’

‘But he hasn’t got a coral,’ said Eleanor.

‘Not got a coral!’ said Miss Thorne, with almost angry vehemence. ‘Not got a coral!—How can you expect that he should cut his teeth? Have you got Daffy’s Elixir?’

Eleanor explained that she had not. It had not been ordered by Mr Rerechild, the Barchester doctor whom she employed; and then the young mother mentioned some shockingly modern succedaneum, which Mr Rerechild’s new lights had taught him to recommend.

Miss Thorne looked awfully severe. ‘Take care, my dear,’ said she, ‘that the man knows what he is about; take care he doesn’t destroy your little boy. ‘But’—and her voice softened into sorrow as she said it, and spoke more in pity than in anger—’but I don’t know who there is in Barchester now that you can trust. Poor dear old Dr Bumpwell, indeed—’

‘Why, Miss Thorne, he died when I was a little girl.’