rs, on whom the voice of the
priestly charmer too often falls in vain; but with the ladies, old
and young, firm and frail, devout and dissipated, he is, as he
conceives, all powerful. He can reprove faults with so much flattery
and utter censure in so caressing a manner that the female heart, if
it glow with a spark of Low Church susceptibility, cannot withstand
him. In many houses he is thus an admired guest: the husbands, for
their wives' sake, are fain to admit him; and when once admitted it
is not easy to shake him off. He has, however, a pawing, greasy way
with him, which does not endear him to those who do not value him
for their souls' sake, and he is not a man to make himself at once
popular in a large circle such as is now likely to surround him at
Barchester.

CHAPTER V

A Morning Visit

It was known that Dr. Proudie would immediately have to reappoint to
the wardenship of the hospital under the act of Parliament to which
allusion has been made; no one imagined that any choice was left to
him--no one for a moment thought that he could appoint any other
than Mr. Harding. Mr. Harding himself, when he heard how the matter
had been settled, without troubling himself much on the subject,
considered it as certain that he would go back to his pleasant house
and garden. And though there would be much that was melancholy, nay,
almost heartrending, in such a return, he still was glad that it was
to be so. His daughter might probably be persuaded to return there
with him. She had, indeed, all but promised to do so, though she
still entertained an idea that that greatest of mortals, that
important atom of humanity, that little god upon earth, Johnny Bold
her baby, ought to have a house of his own over his head.

Such being the state of Mr. Harding's mind in the matter, he did not
feel any peculiar personal interest in the appointment of Dr. Proudie
to the bishopric. He, as well as others at Barchester, regretted
that a man should be sent among them who, they were aware, was not of
their way of thinking; but Mr. Harding himself was not a bigoted man
on points of church doctrine, and he was quite prepared to welcome
Dr. Proudie to Barchester in a graceful and becoming manner. He had
nothing to seek and nothing to fear; he felt that it behoved him
to be on good terms with his bishop, and he did not anticipate any
obstacle that would prevent it.

In such a frame of mind he proceeded to pay his respects at the