Der Praefekt

heavens!  Susan, my dear, what can I say to him?”
     
    “But, papa,” said Mrs Grantly, getting up, and putting her arm through
    that of her father, “what is Eleanor to do if you throw away your
    income?”
     
    A hot tear stood in each of the warden’s eyes as he looked round upon
    his married daughter.  Why should one sister who was so rich predict
    poverty for another?  Some such idea as this was on his mind, but he
    gave no utterance to it.  Then he thought of the pelican feeding its
    young with blood from its own breast, but he gave no utterance to
    that either; and then of Eleanor waiting for him at home, waiting to
    congratulate him on the end of all his trouble.
     
    “Think of Eleanor, papa,” said Mrs Grantly.
     
    “I do think of her,” said her father.
     
    “And you will not do this rash thing?”  The lady was really moved
    beyond her usual calm composure.
     
    “It can never be rash to do right,” said he.  “I shall certainly
    resign this wardenship.”
     
    “Then, Mr Harding, there is nothing before you but ruin,” said the
    archdeacon, now moved beyond all endurance.  “Ruin both for you and
    Eleanor. How do you mean to pay the monstrous expenses of this
    action?”
     
    Mrs Grantly suggested that, as the action was abandoned, the costs
    would not be heavy.
     
    “Indeed they will, my dear,” continued he.  “One cannot have the
    attorney-general up at twelve o’clock at night for nothing;—but of
    course your father has not thought of this.”
     
    “I will sell my furniture,” said the warden.
     
    “Furniture!” ejaculated the other, with a most powerful sneer.
     
    “Come, archdeacon,” said the lady, “we needn’t mind that at present.
    You know you never expected papa to pay the costs.”
     
    “Such absurdity is enough to provoke Job,” said the archdeacon,
    marching quickly up and down the room.  “Your father is like a child.
    Eight hundred pounds a year!—eight hundred and eighty with the
    house,—with nothing to do.  The very place for him.  And to throw
    that up because some scoundrel writes an article in a newspaper!
    Well;—I have done my duty.  If he chooses to ruin his child I cannot
    help it;” and he stood still at the fire-place, and looked at himself
    in a dingy mirror which stood on the chimney-piece.
     
    There was a pause for about a minute, and then the warden, finding
    that nothing else was coming, lighted his candle, and quietly said,
    “Good-night.”
     
    “Good-night, papa,” said the lady.
     
    And so the warden retired; but, as he closed the door behind him, he
    heard the well-known ejaculation,—slower, lower, more solemn, more
    ponderous than ever,—“Good heavens!”
     
     
     
     
    Chapter XIX
     
    THE WARDEN RESIGNS
     
     
    The party met the next morning at breakfast; and a very sombre affair
    it was,—very unlike the breakfasts at Plumstead Episcopi.
     
    There were three thin, small, dry bits of bacon, each an inch long,
    served up under a huge old plated cover; there were four three-cornered
    bits of dry toast, and four square bits of buttered toast; there was
    a loaf of bread, and some oily-looking butter; and on the sideboard
    there were the remains of a cold shoulder of mutton.  The archdeacon,
    however, had not come up from his rectory to St Paul’s Churchyard to
    enjoy himself, and therefore nothing was said of the scanty fare.
     
    The guests were as sorry as the viands;—hardly anything was said over
    the breakfast-table.  The archdeacon munched his toast in ominous
    silence, turning over bitter thoughts in his deep mind.  The warden
    tried to talk to his daughter, and she tried to answer him; but they
    both failed.  There were no feelings at present in common between
    ihnen. The warden was thinking only of getting back to Barchester, and
    calculating whether the archdeacon would expect him to wait for him;
    and Mrs Grantly was preparing herself for a grand attack which she was
    to make on her father, as agreed upon between herself and her husband
    during their curtain confabulation of that morning.
     
    When the waiter had creaked out of the room with the last of the
    teacups, the archdeacon got up and went to the window as though to
    admire the view.  The room looked out on a narrow passage which runs
    from St Paul’s Churchyard to Paternoster Row; and Dr Grantly patiently
    perused the names of the three shopkeepers whose doors were in view.
    The warden still kept his seat at the