matters, and such people had lost their head, and thereby their strength.  And she had been staunch to her own party, preferring bad tea from a low-church grocer, to good tea from a grocer who went to the ritualistic church or to no church at all.  And it is due to her to say that she did not forget those who were true to her—­looking after them mindfully where looking after might be profitable, and fighting their battles where fighting might be more serviceable.  I do not think that the appetite for breakfast of any man or woman in Barchester was disturbed by the news of Mrs Proudie’s death, but there were some who felt that a trouble had fallen on them.

Tidings of the catastrophe reached Hiram’s Hospital on the evening of its occurrence—­Hiram’s Hospital, where dwelt Mr and Mrs Quiverful with all their children.  Now Mrs Quiverful owed a debt of gratitude to Mrs Proudie, having been placed in her present comfortable home by that lady’s patronage.  Mrs Quiverful perhaps understood the character of the deceased woman, and expressed her opinion respecting it, as graphically did anyone in Barchester.  There was the natural surprise felt at the Warden’s Lodge in the Hospital when the tidings were first received there, and the Quiverful family was at first too full of dismay, regrets, and surmises to be able to give themselves impartially to criticism.  But on the following morning, conversation at the breakfast-table naturally referring to the great loss which the bishop had sustained, Mrs Quiverful thus pronounced her opinion of her friend’s character:  ‘You’ll find that he’ll feel it, Q.,’ she said to her husband, in answer to some sarcastic remark made by him as to the removal of the thorn.  ’He’ll feel it, though she was almost too many for him while she was alive.’

‘I daresay he’ll feel it at first,’ said Quiverful; ’but I think he’ll be more comfortable than he has been.’

’Of course he’ll feel it, and go on feeling it till he dies, if he’s the man I take him to be.  You’re not to think that there has been no love because there used to be some words, that he’ll find himself the happier he can do more things as he pleases.  She was a great help to him, and he must have known that she was, in spite of the sharpness of her tongue.  No doubt her tongue was sharp.  No doubt she was upsetting.  And she could make herself a fool too in her struggles to have everything her own way.  But, Q., there were worse women than Mrs Proudie.  She was never one of your idle ones, and I’m quite sure that no man or woman ever heard her say a word against her husband behind his back.’

’All the same, she gave him a terribly bad life of it, if all is true that we hear.’

’There are men who must have what you call a terribly bad life of it, whatever way it goes with them.  The bishop is weak, and he wants somebody near to him to be strong.  She was strong—­perhaps too strong; but he had his advantage of it.  After all I don’t know that his life has been so terribly bad.  I daresay he’s had everything very comfortable about him.  And a man ought to be grateful for that, though very few men ever are.’