row, papa; won't
you wait and go back with us?"

"Why, Eleanor will expect me tonight; and I've so much to do; and--"

"Much to do!" said the archdeacon sotto voce; but the warden heard
him.

"You'd better wait for us, papa."

"Thank ye, my dear! I think I'll go this afternoon." The tamest
animal will turn when driven too hard, and even Mr Harding was
beginning to fight for his own way.

"I suppose you won't be back before three?" said the lady, addressing
her husband.

"I must leave this at two," said the warden.

"Quite out of the question," said the archdeacon, answering his wife,
and still reading the shopkeepers' names; "I don't suppose I shall be
back till five."

There was another long pause, during which Mr Harding continued to
study his Bradshaw.

"I must go to Cox and Cummins," said the archdeacon at last.

"Oh, to Cox and Cummins," said the warden. It was quite a matter of
indifference to him where his son-in-law went. The names of Cox and
Cummins had now no interest in his ears. What had he to do with Cox
and Cummins further, having already had his suit finally adjudicated
upon in a court of conscience, a judgment without power of appeal
fully registered, and the matter settled so that all the lawyers in
London could not disturb it. The archdeacon could go to Cox and
Cummins, could remain there all day in anxious discussion; but what
might be said there was no longer matter of interest to him, who was
so soon to lay aside the name of warden of Barchester Hospital.

The archdeacon took up his shining new clerical hat, and put on his
black new clerical gloves, and looked heavy, respectable, decorous,
and opulent, a decided clergyman of the Church of England, every
inch of him. "I suppose I shall see you at Barchester the day after
to-morrow," said he.

The warden supposed he would.

"I must once more beseech you to take no further steps till you see my
father; if you owe me nothing," and the archdeacon looked as though he
thought a great deal were due to him, "at least you owe so much to my
father;" and, without waiting for a reply, Dr Grantly wended his way
to Cox and Cummins.

Mrs Grantly waited till the last fall of her husband's foot was heard,
as he turned out of the court into St Paul's Churchyard, and then
commenced her task of talking her father over.

"Papa," she began, "this is a most serious business."

"Indeed it is," said the warden, ringing the bell.

"I greatly fee