tors by the fact that the road through it is not private
property. It is a public lane between hedgerows, with a broad grass
margin on each side of the road, from which the lime-trees spring.
Ullathorne Court, therefore, does not stand absolutely surrounded by
its own grounds, though Mr. Thorne is owner of all the adjacent land.
This, however, is the source of very little annoyance to him. Men,
when they are acquiring property, think much of such things, but they
who live where their ancestors have lived for years do not feel the
misfortune. It never occurred either to Mr. or Miss Thorne that they
were not sufficiently private because the world at large might, if it
so wished, walk or drive by their iron gates. That part of the world
which availed itself of the privilege was however very small.

Such a year or two since were the Thornes of Ullathorne. Such, we
believe, are the inhabitants of many an English country-home. May it
be long before their number diminishes.

CHAPTER XXIII

Mr. Arabin Reads Himself in at St. Ewold's

On the Sunday morning the archdeacon with his sister-in-law and Mr.
Arabin drove over to Ullathorne, as had been arranged. On their way
thither the new vicar declared himself to be considerably disturbed
in his mind at the idea of thus facing his parishioners for the first
time. He had, he said, been always subject to _mauvaise honte_ and an
annoying degree of bashfulness, which often unfitted him for any work
of a novel description; and now he felt this so strongly that he
feared he should acquit himself badly in St. Ewold's reading-desk.
He knew, he said, that those sharp little eyes of Miss Thorne would
be on him, and that they would not approve. All this the archdeacon
greatly ridiculed. He himself knew not, and had never known, what it
was to be shy. He could not conceive that Miss Thorne, surrounded as
she would be by the peasants of Ullathorne and a few of the poorer
inhabitants of the suburbs of Barchester, could in any way affect the
composure of a man well accustomed to address the learned congregation
of St. Mary's at Oxford, and he laughed accordingly at the idea of Mr.
Arabin's modesty.

Thereupon Mr. Arabin commenced to subtilize. The change, he said,
from St. Mary's to St. Ewold's was quite as powerful on the spirits
as would be that from St. Ewold's to St. Mary's. Would not a peer
who, by chance of fortune, might suddenly be driven to herd among
navvies be as afraid of