Der Praefekt

table, and examined the pattern
    of the tablecloth; and Mrs Grantly, seating herself on the sofa, began
    to knit.
     
    After a while the warden pulled his Bradshaw out of his pocket, and
    began laboriously to consult it.  There was a train for Barchester at
    10 A.M.  That was out of the question, for it was nearly ten already.
    Another at 3 P.M.; another, the night-mail train, at 9 P.M.  The three
    o’clock train would take him home to tea, and would suit very well.
     
    “My dear,” said he, “I think I shall go back home at three o’clock
    zu Tag. I shall get home at half-past eight. I don’t think there’s
    anything to keep me in London.”
     
    “The archdeacon and I return by the early train to-morrow, papa; won’t
    you wait and go back with us?”
     
    “Why, Eleanor will expect me tonight; and I’ve so much to do; and—”
     
    “Much to do!” said the archdeacon sotto voce; but the warden heard
    ihn.
     
    “You’d better wait for us, papa.”
     
    “Thank ye, my dear!  I think I’ll go this afternoon.”  The tamest
    animal will turn when driven too hard, and even Mr Harding was
    beginning to fight for his own way.
     
    “I suppose you won’t be back before three?” said the lady, addressing
    ihr Ehemann.
     
    “I must leave this at two,” said the warden.
     
    “Quite out of the question,” said the archdeacon, answering his wife,
    and still reading the shopkeepers’ names; “I don’t suppose I shall be
    back till five.”
     
    There was another long pause, during which Mr Harding continued to
    study his Bradshaw.
     
    “I must go to Cox and Cummins,” said the archdeacon at last.
     
    “Oh, to Cox and Cummins,” said the warden.  It was quite a matter of
    indifference to him where his son-in-law went.  The names of Cox and
    Cummins had now no interest in his ears.  What had he to do with Cox
    and Cummins further, having already had his suit finally adjudicated
    upon in a court of conscience, a judgment without power of appeal
    fully registered, and the matter settled so that all the lawyers in
    London could not disturb it.  The archdeacon could go to Cox and
    Cummins, could remain there all day in anxious discussion; but what
    might be said there was no longer matter of interest to him, who was
    so soon to lay aside the name of warden of Barchester Hospital.
     
    The archdeacon took up his shining new clerical hat, and put on his
    black new clerical gloves, and looked heavy, respectable, decorous,
    and opulent, a decided clergyman of the Church of England, every
    inch of him.  “I suppose I shall see you at Barchester the day after
    to-morrow,” said he.
     
    The warden supposed he would.
     
    “I must once more beseech you to take no further steps till you see my
    father; if you owe me nothing,” and the archdeacon looked as though he
    thought a great deal were due to him, “at least you owe so much to my
    father;” and, without waiting for a reply, Dr Grantly wended his way
    to Cox and Cummins.
     
    Mrs Grantly waited till the last fall of her husband’s foot was heard,
    as he turned out of the court into St Paul’s Churchyard, and then
    commenced her task of talking her father over.
     
    “Papa,” she began, “this is a most serious business.”
     
    “Indeed it is,” said the warden, ringing the bell.
     
    “I greatly feel the distress of mind you must have endured.”
     
    “I am sure you do, my dear;”—and he ordered the waiter to bring him
    pen, ink, and paper.
     
    “Are you going to write, papa?”
     
    “Yes, my dear;—I am going to write my resignation to the bishop.”
     
    “Pray, pray, papa, put it off till our return;—pray put it off till
    you have seen the bishop;—dear papa! for my sake, for Eleanor’s!—”
     
    “It is for your sake and Eleanor’s that I do this.  I hope, at least,
    that my children may never have to be ashamed of their father.”
     
    “How can you talk about shame, papa?” and she stopped while the waiter
    creaked in with the paper, and then slowly creaked out again; “how can
    you talk about shame? you know what all your friends think about this
    question.”
     
    The warden spread his paper on the table, placing it on the
    meagre blotting-book which the hotel afforded, and sat himself
    down to write.
     
    “You won’t refuse me one request, papa?” continued his
    daughter; “you won’t refuse to delay your letter for two short
    Tage? Two days can make no possible difference.”
     
    “My