talked with
him the whole way from Hogglestock to Framley Court; discoursing
partly as to horses and land, but partly also as to higher things.
And then Lady Lufton opened her mind and told her griefs to Mr.
Crawley, urging, however, through the whole length of her narrative,
that Mr. Robarts was an excellent parish clergyman,--"just such a
clergyman in his church as I would wish him to be," she explained,
with the view of saving herself from an expression of any of Mr.
Crawley's special ideas as to church teaching, and of confining him
to the one subject-matter in hand; "but he got this living so young,
Mr. Crawley, that he is hardly quite as steady as I could wish him to
be. It has been as much my fault as his own in placing him in such a
position so early in life."

"I think it has," said Mr. Crawley, who might perhaps be a little
sore on such a subject.

"Quite so, quite so," continued her ladyship, swallowing down with
a gulp a certain sense of anger. "But that is done now, and is past
cure. That Mr. Robarts will become a credit to his profession, I do
not doubt, for his heart is in the right place and his sentiments are
good; but I fear that at present he is succumbing to temptation."

"I am told that he hunts two or three times a week. Everybody round
us is talking about it."

"No, Mr. Crawley; not two or three times a week; very seldom above
once, I think. And then I do believe he does it more with the view of
being with Lord Lufton than anything else."

"I cannot see that that would make the matter better," said Mr.
Crawley.

"It would show that he was not strongly imbued with a taste which I
cannot but regard as vicious in a clergyman."

"It must be vicious in all men," said Mr. Crawley. "It is in itself
cruel, and leads to idleness and profligacy." Again Lady Lufton made
a gulp. She had called Mr. Crawley thither to her aid, and felt that
it would be inexpedient to quarrel with him. But she did not like to
be told that her son's amusement was idle and profligate. She had
always regarded hunting as a proper pursuit for a country gentleman.
It was, indeed, in her eyes one of the peculiar institutions of
country life in England, and it may be almost said that she looked
upon the Barsetshire Hunt as something sacred. She could not endure
to hear that a fox was trapped, and allowed her turkeys to be
purloined without a groan. Such being the case, she did not like
being told that it was vicious, and had b