‘What!’

‘I do not find myself fit for new duties,’ urged Mr Harding.

‘New duties! what duties?’ said the archdeacon, with unintended sarcasm.

‘Oh, papa,’ said Mrs Grantly, ‘nothing can be easier that what a dean has to do. Surely you are more active than Dr Trefoil.’

‘He won’t have half as much to do as at present,’ said Dr Grantly.

‘Did you see what the Jupiter said the other day about young men?’

‘Yes; and I saw that the Jupiter said all that it could to induce the appointment of Mr Slope. Perhaps you would wish to see Mr Slope made dean.’

Mr Harding made no reply to this rebuke, though he felt it strongly. He had not come over to Plumstead to have further contention with his son–in–law about Mr Slope, so he allowed it to pass by.

‘I know I cannot make you understand my feeling,’ he said, ‘for we have been cast in different moulds. I may wish that I had your spirit and energy and power of combatting; but I have not. Every day that is added to my life increases my wish for peace and rest.’

‘And where on earth can a man have peace and rest if not in a deanery?’ said the archdeacon.

‘People will say I am too old for it.’

‘Good heavens! What people? What need you care for any people?’

‘But I think myself I am too old for any new place.’

‘Dear papa,’ said Mrs Grantly, ‘men ten years older than you have been appointed to new situations day after day.’

‘My dear,’ said he, ‘it is impossible that I should make you understand my feelings, nor do I pretend to any great virtue in the matter. The truth is, I want the force of character which might enable me to stand against the spirit of the times. The call on all sides now is for young men, and I have not the nerve to put myself in opposition to the demand. Were the Jupiter, when it hears of my appointment, to write article after article, setting forth my incompetency, I am sure it would cost me my reason. I ought to be able to bear with such things, you will say. Well, my dear, I own that I ought. But I feel my weakness and I know that I can’t. And, to tell you the truth, I know no more than a child what the dean has to do.’

‘Pshaw!’ exclaimed the archdeacon.

‘Don’t be angry with me, archdeacon; don’t let us quarrel about it, Susan. If you knew how keenly I feel the necessity of having to disoblige you in this matter, you would not be angry with me.’

This was a dreadful blow to Dr Grantly. Nothing could possibly have suited him better than having Mr Harding in the deanery. Though he had never looked down on Mr Harding on account of his great poverty, he did fully recognise the satisfaction of having those belonging to him in comfortable positions. It would be much more suitable that Mr Harding should be dean of Barchester than vicar of St Cuthbert’s and precentor to boot. And then the great discomfiture of that arch enemy of all that was respectable in Barchester, of that new low church clerical parvenu that had fallen amongst them, that alone would be worth more, almost than the situation itself. It was frightful to think that such unhoped for good fortune should be marred by the absurd crotchets and unwholesome hallucinations by which Mr Harding allowed