There were guests there that evening who did not often sit at the bishop’s table.  The archdeacon and Mrs Grantly had been summoned from Plumstead, and had obeyed the summons.  Great as was the enmity between the bishop and the archdeacon, it had never quite taken the form of open palpable hostility.  Each, therefore, asked the other to dinner perhaps once every year; and each went to the other, perhaps, once in two years.  And Dr Thorne from Chaldicotes was there but without his wife, who in these days was up in London.  Mrs Proudie always expressed a warm friendship for Mrs Thorne, and on this occasion loudly regretted her absence.  ’You must tell her, Dr Thorne, how exceedingly much we miss her.’  Dr Thorne, who was accustomed to hear his wife speak of her dear friend Mrs Proudie with almost unmeasured ridicule, promised that he would do so.  ‘We are sorry the Lufton’s couldn’t come to us,’ said Mrs Proudie—­not alluding to the dowager, of whom it was well known that no earthly inducement would have sufficed to make her put her foot within Mrs Proudie’s room—­’but one of the children is ill, and she couldn’t leave him.’  But the Greshams were there from Boxall Hill, and the Thornes from Ullathorne, and, with the exception of a single chaplain, who pretended to carve, Dr Tempest and the archdeacon were the only clerical guests at the table.  From all which Dr Temple knew that the bishop was anxious to treat him with special consideration on the present occasion.

The dinner was rather long and ponderous, and occasionally, most dull.  The archdeacon talked a good deal, but a bystander with an acute ear might have understood from the tone of his voice that he was not talking as he would have talked among friends.  Mrs Proudie felt this, and understood it, and was angry.  She could never find herself in the presence of the archdeacon without becoming angry.  Her accurate ear would always appreciate the defiance of episcopal authority, as now existing in Barchester, which was concealed, or only half concealed, by all the archdeacon’s words.  But the bishop was not so keen, nor so easily roused, to wrath; and though the presence of the enemy did to a certain degree cow him, he strove to fight against the feeling with renewed good-humour.

‘You have improved so upon the old days,’ said the archdeacon, speaking of some small matter with reference to the cathedral, ’that one hardly knows the old place.’

‘I hope we have not fallen off,’ said the bishop, with a smile.

‘We have improved, Dr Grantly,’ said Mrs Proudie, with great emphasis on her words.  ‘What you say is true.  We have improved.’

‘Not a doubt about that,’ said the archdeacon.  Then Mrs Grantly interposed, strove to change the subject, and threw oil upon the waters.

‘Talking of improvements,’ said Mrs Grantly, ’what an excellent row of houses they have built at the bottom of High Street.  ’I wonder who is to live in them?’