servants met him ever on the move.
He would make little apologies for his uneasiness, which they would
accept graciously, understanding, after a fashion, why it was that he
was uneasy. "He ain't got nothing to do," said the housemaid to the
cook "and as for reading, they say that some of the young ones can
read all day sometimes, and all night too; but bless you, when you're
nigh eighty, reading don't go for much." The housemaid was right as
to Mr. Harding's reading. He was not one who had read so much in his
earlier days as to enable him to make reading go far with him now
that he was near eighty. So he wandered about the room, and sat here
for a few minutes, and there for a few minutes, and though he did
not sleep much, he made the hours of the night as many as possible.
Every morning he shambled across from the deanery to the cathedral,
and attended the morning service, sitting in the stall which he had
occupied for fifty years. The distance was very short, not exceeding,
indeed, a hundred yards from a side-door in the deanery to another
side-door into the cathedral; but short as it was there had come to
be a question whether he should be allowed to go alone. It had been
feared that he might fall on his passage and hurt himself; for there
was a step here, and a step there, and the light was not very good
in the purlieus of the old cathedral. A word or two had been said
once, and the offer of an arm to help him had been made; but he
had rejected the proffered assistance, softly, indeed, but still
firmly,--and every day he tottered off by himself, hardly lifting his
feet as he went, and aiding himself on his journey by a hand upon the
wall when he thought that nobody was looking at him. But many did see
him, and they who knew him,--ladies generally of the city,--would
offer him a hand. Nobody was milder in his dislikings than Mr
Harding; but there were ladies in Barchester upon whose arm he would
always decline to lean, bowing courteously as he did so, and saying a
word or two of constrained civility. There were others whom he would
allow to accompany him home to the door of the deanery, with whom he
delighted to linger and chat if the morning was warm, and to whom he
would tell little stories of his own doings in the cathedral services
in the old days, when Bishop Grantly had ruled the diocese. Never a
word did he say against Bishop Proudie, or against Bishop Proudie's
wife; but the many words which he did say in prai