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194 ," said Mrs. Grantly, very quietly. Now the Miss Proudies had not elicited from the fashionable world any very loud encomiums on their beauty. Their mother felt the taunt in its fullest force, but she would not essay to do battle on the present arena. She jotted down the item in her mind, and kept it over for Barchester and the chapter. Such debts as those she usually paid on some day, if the means of doing so were at all within her power.

"But there is Miss Dunstable, I declare," she said, seeing that that lady had entered the room; and away went Mrs. Proudie to welcome her distinguished guest.

"And so this is a conversazione, is it?" said that lady, speaking, as usual, not in a suppressed voice. "Well, I declare, it's very nice. It means conversation, don't it, Mrs. Proudie?"

"Ha! ha! ha! Miss Dunstable. There is nobody like you, I declare."

"Well, but don't it? and tea and cake? and then, when we're tired of talking, we go away—isn't that it?"

"But you must not be tired for these three hours yet."

"Oh, I am never tired of talking; all the world knows that. How do, bishop? A very nice sort of thing this conversazione, isn't it, now?"

The bishop rubbed his hands together and smiled, and said that he thought it was rather nice.

"Mrs. Proudie is so fortunate in all her little arrangements," said Miss Dunstable.

"Yes, yes," said the bishop. "I think she is happy in these matters. I do flatter myself that she is so. Of course, Miss Dunstable, you are accustomed to things on a much grander scale."

"I! Lord bless you, no! Nobody hates grandeur so much as I do. Of course, I must do as I am told. I must live in a big house, and have three footmen six feet high. I must have a coachman with a top-heavy wig, and horses so big that they frighten me. If I did not, I should be made out a lunatic, and declared unable to manage my own affairs. But as for grandeur, I hate it. I certainly think that I shall have some of these conversaziones. I wonder whether Mrs. Proudie would come and put me up to a wrinkle or two."

The bishop again rubbed his hands, and said that he was sure she would. He never felt quite at his ease with Miss