‘What else?’ said the archdeacon.

’It is a pity something could not be done for him after all he has undergone.  How on earth can he be expected to live there with a wife and family, and no private means?’ To this the archdeacon made no answer.  Mrs Grantly had spoken almost immediately upon their quitting Plumstead, and the silence was continued till the carriage had entered the suburbs of the city.  Then Mrs Grantly spoke again, asking a question, with some internal trepidation which, however, she managed to hide from her husband.  ‘When poor papa does go, what shall you do about St Ewold’s?’ Now, St Ewold’s was a rural parish lying about two miles out of Barchester, the living of which was in the gift of the archdeacon, and to which the archdeacon had presented to his father-in-law, under certain circumstances, which need not be repeated in this last chronicle of Barsetshire.  Have they not been written in other chronicles?  ’When poor papa does go, what will you do about St Ewold’s?’ said Mrs Grantly, trembling inwardly.  A word too much might, as she well knew, settle the question against Mr Crawley for ever.  But were she to postpone the word till too late, the question would be settled as fatally.

‘I haven’t thought about it,’ he said sharply.  ’I don’t like thinking of such things while the incumbent is still living.’  Oh, archdeacon, archdeacon!  Unless that other chronicle be a false chronicle, how hast thou forgotten thyself and thy past life!  ’Particularly not, when that incumbent is your father,’ said the archdeacon.  Mrs Grantly said nothing more about St Ewold’s.  She would have said as much as she had intended to say if she had succeeded in making the archdeacon understand that St Ewold’s would be a very nice refuge for Mr Crawley after all the miseries which he had endured at Hogglestock.

They learned as they entered the deanery that Mrs Baxter had already heard of Mrs Arabin’s return.  ’Oh yes, ma’am.  Mr Harding got a letter hisself, and I got another—­separate; both from Venice, ma’am.  But when master come nobody seems to know.’  Mrs Baxter knew that the dean had gone to Jerusalem, and was inclined to think that from such distant bournes there was not return to any traveller.  The East is always further than the West in the estimation of the Mrs Baxters of the world.  Had the dean gone to Canada, she would have thought that he might come back tomorrow.  But still there was the news to be told of Mr Crawley, and there was also joy to be expressed at the sudden coming back of the much-wished-for mistress of the deanery.

‘It’s so good of you to come both together,’ said Mr Harding.

‘We thought that we should be too many for you,’ said the archdeacon.

’Too many!  Oh dear no.  I like to have people by me; and as for voices and noise, and all that, the more the better.  But I am weak.  I’m weak in my legs.  I don’t think I shall ever stand again.’