Page:The Last Chronicle of Barset Vol 2.djvu/273

Rh come to be around Mrs. Proudie a party who thought as she thought on church matters, and such people had lost their head, and thereby their strength. And she had been staunch to her own party, preferring bad tea from a low-church grocer, to good tea from a grocer who went to the ritualistic church or to no church at all. And it is due to her to say that she did not forget those who were true to her,—looking after them mindfully where looking after might be profitable, and fighting their battles where fighting might be more serviceable. I do not think that the appetite for breakfast of any man or woman in Barchester was disturbed by the news of Mrs. Proudie's death, but there were some who felt that a trouble had fallen on them.

Tidings of the catastrophe reached Hiram's Hospital on the evening of its occurrence,—Hiram's Hospital, where dwelt Mr. and Mrs. Quiverful with all their children. Now Mrs. Quiverful owed a debt of gratitude to Mrs. Proudie, having been placed in her present comfortable home by that lady's patronage. Mrs. Quiverful perhaps understood the character of the deceased woman, and expressed her opinion respecting it, as graphically as did any one in Barchester. There was the natural surprise felt at the Warden's lodge in the Hospital when the tidings were first received there, and the Quiverful family was at first too full of dismay, regrets and surmises, to be able to give themselves impartially to criticism. But on the following morning, conversation at the breakfast-table naturally referring to the great loss which the bishop had sustained, Mrs. Quiverful thus pronounced her opinion of her friend's character: "You'll find that he'll feel it, Q.," she said to her husband, in answer to some sarcastic remark made by him as to the removal of the thorn. "He'll feel it, though she was almost too many for him while she was alive."

"I daresay he'll feel it at first," said Quiverful; "but I think he'll be more comfortable than he has been."

"Of course he'll feel it, and go on feeling it till he dies, if he's the man I take him to be. You're not to think that there has been no love because there used to be some words, that he'll find himself the happier because he can do things more as he pleases. She was a great help to him, and he must have known that she was, in spite of the sharpness of her tongue. No doubt she was sharp. No doubt she was upsetting. And she could make herself a fool too in her struggles to have everything her own way. But, Q., there were worse women than Mrs. Proudie. She was never one of your idle ones, and I'm quite sure that no man or woman ever heard her say a word against her husband behind his back."