‘But Mrs Baxter won’t be angry,’ said Posy.  Mrs Baxter was the housekeeper in the deanery, and had Mr Harding under her especial charge.

’No, my darling; Mrs Baxter will not be angry, but we mustn’t disturb the house.’

‘No,’ said Posy, with much of important awe in her tone; ’we mustn’t disturb the house; must we, grandpa?’ And so she gave in her adhesion to the closing of the case.  But Posy could play cat’s-cradle, and as cat’s-cradle did not disturb the house at all, there was a good deal of cat’s-cradle played in those days.  Posy’s fingers were so soft and pretty, so small and deft, that the dear old man delighted in taking the strings from them, and in having them taken from his own by those tender little digits.

On the afternoon after the conversation respecting Grace Crawley which is recorded in the early part of this chapter, a messenger from Barchester went over to Plumstead, and part of his mission consisted of a note from Mrs Baxter to Mrs Grantly, beginning ‘Honoured Madam,’ and informing Mrs Grantly, among other things, that her ‘respected papa’, as Mrs Baxter called him, was not quite so well as usual; not that Mrs Baxter thought that there was much the matter.  Mr Harding had been to the cathedral service, as was usual with him, but had come home leaning on a lady’s arm, who had thought it well to stay with him at the door till it had been opened for him.  After that ‘Miss Posy’ had found him asleep, and had been unable—­or if not unable, unwilling, to wake him.  ‘Miss Posy’ had come down to Mrs Baxter somewhat in a fright, and hence this letter had been written.  Mrs Baxter thought that there was nothing ‘to fright’ Mrs Grantly, and she wasn’t sure that she should have written at all only that Dick was bound to go over to Plumstead with the wool; but as Dick was going, Mrs Baxter thought it proper to send her duty, and to say that to her humble way of thinking perhaps it might be best that Mr Harding shouldn’t go alone to the cathedral in the morning.  ‘If the dear reverend gentleman was to get a tumble, ma’am,’ said the letter, ‘it would be awkward.’  Then Mrs Grantly remembered that she had left her father almost without a greeting in the previous day, and she resolved that she would go over very early on the following morning—­so early that she would be at the deanery before her father should have gone to the cathedral.

‘He ought to have come over here.  And not stayed there by himself,’ said the archdeacon, when his wife told him of her intention.

’It is too late to think of that now, my dear; and one can understand, I think, that he should not like leaving the cathedral as long as he can attend it.  The truth is that he does not like being out of Barchester.’