‘About as pleasant and as probably as having you in the palace,’ said the chancellor.

‘I should think such an appointment highly improbable,’ said the minor canon, ‘and, moreover, extremely injudicious. Should not you, Mr Archdeacon?’

‘I should presume such a thing to be quite out of the question,’ said the archdeacon; ‘but at the present moment I am thinking rather of our poor friend who is lying so near us than of Mr Slope.’

‘Of course, of course,’ said the vicar choral with a very solemn air; ‘of course you are. So are we all. Poor Dr Trefoil; the best of men but—’

‘It’s the most comfortable dean’s residence in England,’ said a second prebendary. ‘Fifteen acres in the grounds. ‘It is better than many of the bishops’ palaces.’

‘And full two thousand a year,’ said the meagre doctor.

‘It is cut down to £ 1200,’ said the chancellor.

‘No,’ said the second prebendary. ‘It is to be fifteen. A special case was made.’

‘No such thing,’ said the chancellor.

‘You’ll find I’m right,’ said the prebendary.

‘I’m sure I read it in the report,’ said the minor canon.

‘Nonsense,’ said the chancellor. ‘They couldn’t do it. There were to be no exceptions but London and Durham.’

‘And Canterbury and York,’ said the vicar choral, modestly.

‘What say you, Grantly?’ said the meagre little doctor.

‘Say about what?’ said the archdeacon, who had been looking as though he were thinking about his friend the dean, but who had in reality been thinking about Mr Slope.

‘What is the next dean to have, twelve or fifteen?’

‘Twelve,’ said the archdeacon authoritatively, thereby putting an end at once to all doubt and dispute among the subordinates as far as that subject was concerned.

‘Well I certainly thought it was fifteen,’ said the minor canon.

‘Pooh!’ said the burly chancellor. At this moment the door opened, and in came Dr Fillgrave.

‘How is he?’ ‘Is he conscious?’ ‘Can he speak?’ ‘I hope, I trust, something better, doctor?’ said half a dozen voices all at once, each in a tone of extremest anxiety. It was pleasant to see how popular the good old dean was among his clergy.

‘No change, gentlemen; not the slightest change—but a telegraphic message has arrived,—Sir Omicron Pie will be here by the 9.15pm train. If any man can do anything Sir Omicron will do it. But all that skill can do has been done.’

‘We are sure of that, Dr Fillgrave,’ said the archdeacon; ‘we are quite sure of that. But yet you know—’

‘Oh, quite right,’ said the doctor, ‘quite right—I should have done just the same—I advised it at once. I said to Rerechild at once that with such a life and such a man, Sir Omicron should be summoned—of