e carting away the
rubbish was still present to his mind.

The archdeacon drank off his glass of claret and prepared himself to
be energetic. "I do hope," said he, "that you are not going to be so
weak as to allow such a man as Mr. Slope to deter you from doing what
you know it is your duty to do. You know it is your duty to resume
your place at the hospital now that parliament has so settled the
stipend as to remove those difficulties which induced you to resign
it. You cannot deny this, and should your timidity now prevent you
from doing so, your conscience will hereafter never forgive you," and
as he finished this clause of his speech, he pushed over the bottle
to his companion.

"Your conscience will never forgive you," he continued. "You resigned
the place from conscientious scruples, scruples which I greatly
respected, though I did not share them. All your friends respected
them, and you left your old house as rich in reputation as you were
ruined in fortune. It is now expected that you will return. Dr. Gwynne
was saying only the other day--"

"Dr. Gwynne does not reflect how much older a man I am now than when
he last saw me."

"Old--nonsense," said the archdeacon; "you never thought yourself old
till you listened to the impudent trash of that coxcomb at the
palace."

"I shall be sixty-five if I live till November," said Mr. Harding.

"And seventy-five, if you live till November ten years," said the
archdeacon. "And you bid fair to be as efficient then as you were
ten years ago. But for heaven's sake let us have no pretence in this
matter. Your plea of old age is a pretence. But you're not drinking
your wine. It is only a pretence. The fact is, you are half-afraid
of this Slope, and would rather subject yourself to comparative
poverty and discomfort than come to blows with a man who will trample
on you, if you let him."

"I certainly don't like coming to blows, if I can help it."

"Nor I neither--but sometimes we can't help it. This man's object is
to induce you to refuse the hospital, that he may put some creature
of his own into it; that he may show his power and insult us all by
insulting you, whose cause and character are so intimately bound up
with that of the chapter. You owe it to us all to resist him in this,
even if you have no solicitude for yourself. But surely, for your own
sake, you will not be so lily-livered as to fall into this trap which
he has baited for you and let him take the very