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66 understand why others should be less serious, and was inclined to resent somewhat stiffly the amenities of our friend Mark.

"We must not keep the baron waiting," said Mark, as they were preparing to start for Barchester.

"I don't know what you mean by the baron, sir," said Harold Smith. "But perhaps the joke will be against you when you are getting up into your pulpit to-morrow and sending the hat round among the clodhoppers of Chaldicotes."

"Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones—eh, baron?" said Miss Dunstable. "Mr. Robarts's sermon will be too near akin to your lecture to allow of his laughing."

"If we can do nothing toward instructing the outer world till it's done by the parsons," said Harold Smith, "the outer world will have to wait a long time, I fear."

"Nobody can do any thing of that kind short of a member of Parliament and a would-be minister," whispered Mrs. Harold.

And so they were all very pleasant together, in spite of a little fencing with edge tools; and at three o'clock the cortége of carriages started for Barchester, that of the bishop, of course, leading the way. His lordship, however, was not in it.

"Mrs. Proudie, I'm sure you'll let me go with you," said Miss Dunstable, at the last moment, as she came down the big stone steps. "I want to hear the rest of that story about Mr. Slope."

Now this upset every thing. The bishop was to have gone with his wife, Mrs. Smith, and Mark Robarts; and Mr. Sowerby had so arranged matters that he could have accompanied Miss Dunstable in his phaeton. But no one ever dreamed of denying Miss Dunstable any thing. Of course, Mark gave way; but it ended in the bishop declaring that he had no special predilection for his own carriage, which he did in compliance with a glance from his wife's eye. Then other changes of course followed, and at last Mr. Sowerby and Harold Smith were the joint occupants of the phaeton.

The poor lecturer, as he seated himself, made some remark such as those he had been making for the last two days—for out of a full heart the mouth speaketh. But he