t to get him on his legs, but much greater difficulty was
soon experienced in inducing him to resume his seat. One of two
arrangements should certainly be made in these days: either let all
speech-making on festive occasions be utterly tabooed and made as it
were impossible; or else let those who are to exercise the privilege
be first subjected to a competing examination before the civil-service
examining commissioners. As it is now, the Honourable Georges do but
little honour to our exertions in favour of British education.

In the dining-room the bishop went through the honours of the day
with much more neatness and propriety. He also drank Miss Thorne's
health, and did it in a manner becoming the bench which he adorned.
The party there was perhaps a little more dull, a shade less lively
than that in the tent. But what was lost in mirth was fully made up
in decorum.

And so the banquets passed off at the various tables with great eclat
and universal delight.

CHAPTER XL

Ullathorne Sports--Act II

"That which has made them drunk has made me bold." 'Twas thus that
Mr. Slope encouraged himself, as he left the dining-room in pursuit
of Eleanor. He had not indeed seen in that room any person really
intoxicated, but there had been a good deal of wine drunk, and Mr.
Slope had not hesitated to take his share, in order to screw himself
up to the undertaking which he had in hand. He is not the first man
who has thought it expedient to call in the assistance of Bacchus on
such an occasion.

Eleanor was out through the window and on the grass before she
perceived that she was followed. Just at that moment the guests were
nearly all occupied at the tables. Here and there were to be seen a
constant couple or two, who preferred their own sweet discourse to
the jingle of glasses or the charms of rhetoric which fell from the
mouths of the Honourable George and the Bishop of Barchester; but the
grounds were as nearly vacant as Mr. Slope could wish them to be.

Eleanor saw that she was pursued, and as a deer, when escape is no
longer possible, will turn to bay and attack the hounds, so did she
turn upon Mr. Slope.

"Pray don't let me take you from the room," said she, speaking with
all the stiffness which she knew how to use. "I have come out to look
for a friend. I must beg of you, Mr. Slope, to go back."

But Mr. Slope would not be thus entreated. He had observed all day
that Mrs. Bold was not cordial to him, and