The archdeacon was striving to teach a great lesson to his son when he thus spoke of the pleasure which a man feels when he stands upon his own ground.  He was bidding his son to understand how great was the position of an heir to a landed property, and how small the position of a man depending on what Dr Grantly himself would have called a scratch income—­an income made up of a few odds and ends, a share or two in this company and a share or two in that, a slight venture in foreign stocks, a small mortgage and such-like convenient but uninfluential driblets.  A man, no doubt, may live at Pau and enjoy life after a fashion while reading Galignani and looking at the mountains.  But—­as it seemed to the archdeacon—­when there was a choice between this kind of thing, and fox-covers at Plumstead, and a seat among the magistrates of Barsetshire, and an establishment full of horses, beeves, swine, carriages, and hayricks, a man brought up as his son had been brought up ought not to be very long in choosing.  It never entered into the archdeacon’s mind that he was tempting his son; but Henry Grantly felt that he was having the good things of the world shown to him, and that he was being told that they should be his—­for a consideration.

The major, in his present mood, looked at the matter from his own point of view, and determined that the consideration was too high.  He was pledged not to give up Grace Crawley, and he would not yield on that point, though he might be tempted by all the fox-covers in Barsetshire.  At this moment he did not know how far his father was prepared to yield, or how far it was expected that he should yield himself.  He was told that he had to speak to his mother.  He would speak to his mother, but, in the meantime, he could not bring himself to make a comfortable answer to his father’s eloquent praise of landed property.  He could not allow himself to be enthusiastic on the matter till he knew what was expected of him if he chose to submit to be made a British squire.  At present Galignani and the mountains had their charms for him.  There was, therefore, but little conversation between the father and the son as the walked back to the rectory.

Late that night the major heard the whole story from his mother.  Gradually, and as though unintentionally, Mrs Grantly told him all she knew of the archdeacon’s visit to Framley.  Mrs Grantly was quite as anxious as was her husband to keep her son at home, and therefore she omitted in her story those little sneers against Grace which she herself had been tempted to make by the archdeacon’s fervour in the girl’s favour.  The major said as little as was possible while he was being told of his father’s adventure, and expressed neither anger nor satisfaction till he had been made thoroughly to understand that Grace had pledged herself not to marry him as long as any suspicion should rest upon her father’s name.

‘Your father is quite satisfied with her,’ said Mrs Grantly.  ’He thinks that she is behaving very well.’