e to be taken against him for
brawling.

The party who were inclined to defend him--the enthusiastically
religious young ladies and the middle-aged spinsters desirous of a
move--of course took up his defence the more warmly on account of
this attack. If they could not hear Mr. Slope in the cathedral, they
would hear him elsewhere; they would leave the dull dean, the dull
old prebendaries, and the scarcely less dull young minor canons to
preach to each other; they would work slippers and cushions and
hem bands for Mr. Slope, make him a happy martyr, and stick him up
in some new Sion or Bethesda, and put the cathedral quite out of
fashion.

Dr. and Mrs. Proudie at once returned to London. They thought it
expedient not to have to encounter any personal application from the
dean and chapter respecting the sermon till the violence of the storm
had expended itself; but they left Mr. Slope behind them nothing
daunted, and he went about his work zealously, flattering such as
would listen to his flattery, whispering religious twaddle into the
ears of foolish women, ingratiating himself with the few clergy who
would receive him, visiting the houses of the poor, inquiring into
all people, prying into everything, and searching with his minutest
eye into all palatial dilapidations. He did not, however, make any
immediate attempt to preach again in the cathedral.

And so all Barchester was by the ears.

CHAPTER VIII

The Ex-warden Rejoices in His Probable Return to the Hospital

Among the ladies in Barchester who have hitherto acknowledged Mr.
Slope as their spiritual director must not be reckoned either the
Widow Bold or her sister-in-law. On the first outbreak of the wrath
of the denizens of the close, none had been more animated against
the intruder than these two ladies. And this was natural. Who could
be so proud of the musical distinction of their own cathedral as
the favourite daughter of the precentor? Who would be so likely to
resent an insult offered to the old choir? And in such matters Miss
Bold and her sister-in-law had but one opinion.

This wrath, however, has in some degree been mitigated, and I regret
to say that these ladies allowed Mr. Slope to be his own apologist.
About a fortnight after the sermon had been preached, they were both
of them not a little surprised by hearing Mr. Slope announced, as the
page in buttons opened Mrs. Bold's drawing-room door. Indeed, what
living man could, by a mere m