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 he thought that his wife was hard upon him. "But it is generally thought that a parish clergyman does well to meet his bishop now and then. And as I was invited there, especially to preach while all these people are staying at the place, I could not well refuse." And then he got up, and taking his candlestick, escaped to his dressing-room.

"But what am I to say to Lady Lufton?" his wife said to him, in the course of the evening.

"Just write her a note, and tell her that you find I had promised to preach at Chaldicotes next Sunday. You'll go, of course?"

"Yes: but I know she'll be annoyed. You were away the last time she had people there."

"It can't be helped. She must put it down against Sarah Thompson. She ought not to expect to win always."

"I should not have minded it, if she had lost, as you call it, about Sarah Thompson. That was a case in which you ought to have had your own way."

"And this other is a case in which I shall have it. It's a pity that there should be such a difference; isn't it?"

Then the wife perceived that, vexed as she was, it would be better that she should say nothing further; and before she went to bed, she wrote the note to Lady Lufton, as her husband recommended.

CHAPTER II.

It will be necessary that I should say a word or two of some of the people named in the few preceding pages, and also of the localities in which they lived.

Of Lady Lufton herself enough, perhaps, has been written to introduce her to my readers. The Framley property belonged to her son; but as Lufton Park—an ancient ramshackle place in another county—had heretofore been the family residence of the Lufton family, Framley Court had been apportioned to her for her residence for life. Lord Lufton himself was still unmarried; and as he had no establishment at Lufton Park—which indeed had not been inhabited since his grandfather died—he lived with his mother when it suited him to live anywhere in that neighbourhood. The widow would fain have seen more of him than he allowed her to do. He had a shooting-lodge in Scotland, and apartments in London, and a string of horses in Leicestershire—much to the disgust of the county gentry around him, who held that their own hunting was as good as any that England could afford. His lordship, however, paid his subscription to the East Barsetshire pack, and then thought himself at liberty to follow his own pleasure as to his own amusement.

Framley itself was a pleasant country place, having about it nothing of