ning, Mr
Dean? As it happens, I shall be at liberty." The dean of course said
that he would take it as an additional favour. Neither the dean nor
the archdeacon had the slightest belief in Dr. Filgrave, and yet they
would hardly have been contented that their father-in-law should have
departed without him.

"Look at that man, now," said the archdeacon, when the doctor had
gone, "who talks so glibly about nature going to rest. I've known
him all my life. He's an older man by some months than our dear
old friend upstairs. And he looks as if he were going to attend
death-beds in Barchester for ever."

"I suppose he is right in what he tells us now?" said the dean.

"No doubt he is; but my belief doesn't come from his saying it." Then
there was a pause as the two church dignitaries sat together, doing
nothing, feeling that the solemnity of the moment was such that it
would be hardly becoming that they should even attempt to read. "His
going will make an old man of me," said the archdeacon. "It will be
different with you."

"It will make an old woman of Eleanor, I fear."

"I seem to have known him all my life," said the archdeacon. "I have
known him ever since I left college; and I have known him as one man
seldom does know another. There is nothing that he has done,--as I
believe nothing that he has thought,--with which I have not been
cognisant. I feel sure that he never had an impure fancy in his mind,
or a faulty wish in his heart. His tenderness has surpassed the
tenderness of woman; and yet, when occasion came for showing it, he
had all the spirit of a hero. I shall never forget his resignation of
the hospital, and all that I did and said to make him keep it."

"But he was right?"

"As Septimus Harding he was, I think, right; but it would have been
wrong in any other man. And he was right, too, about the deanery."
For promotion had once come in Mr. Harding's way, and he, too, might
have been Dean of Barchester. "The fact is, he never was wrong.
He couldn't go wrong. He lacked guile, and he feared God,--and a
man who does both will never go far astray. I don't think he ever
coveted aught in his life,--except a new case for his violoncello and
somebody to listen to him when he played it." Then the archdeacon got
up, and walked about the room in his enthusiasm; and, perhaps, as
he walked some thoughts as to the sterner ambition of his own life
passed through his mind. What things had he coveted? Had he lacked
gu