’What he must have endured it is impossible to conceive.  I shall go out to him tomorrow.’

‘Would he not come to us?’ said Mrs Arabin.

’I doubt it.  I will ask him, of course.  I will ask them all here.  This about Henry and the girl may make a difference.  He has resigned the living, and some of the palace people are doing the duty.’

‘But he can have it again?’

’Oh, yes; he can have it again.  For the matter of that, I need simply to give him back his letter.  Only he is so odd—­so unlike other people!  And he has tried to live there, and has failed; and is now in debt.  I wonder whether Grantly will give him St Ewold’s?’

‘I wish he would.  But you must ask him.  I should not dare.’

As to the matter of the cheque, the dean acknowledged to his wife at last that he had some recollection of her having told him that she had made the sum of money up to seventy pounds.  ’I don’t feel certain of it now; but I think you must have done so.’  ’I am quite sure I could have done it without telling you,’ she replied.  ’At any rate you said nothing of the cheque,’ pleaded the dean.  ‘I don’t suppose I did,’ said Mrs Arabin.  ’I thought that cheques were like any other money; but I shall know better for the future.’

On the following morning the dean rode over to Hogglestock, and as he drew near to the house of his old friend, his spirits flagged—­for to tell the truth, he dreaded the meeting.  Since the day on which he had brought Mr Crawley from a curacy in Cornwall into the diocese of Barchester, his friend had been a trouble to him rather than a joy.  The trouble had been a trouble of spirit altogether—­not all of pocket.  He would willingly have picked the Crawleys out from the pecuniary mud into which they were for ever falling, time after time, had it been possible.  For, though the dean was hardly to be called a rich man, his lines had fallen to him not only in pleasant places, but in easy circumstances—­and Mr Crawley’s embarrassments, though overwhelming to him, were not so great as to have been heavy to the dean.  But in striving to do this he had always failed, had always suffered, and had generally been rebuked.  Crawley would attempt to argue with him as to the improper allotment of Church endowments—­declaring that he did not do so with any reference to his own circumstances, but simply because the subject was one naturally interesting to clergymen.  And this he would do, as he was waving off with his hand offers of immediate assistance which were indispensable.  Then there had been scenes between the dean and Mrs Crawley—­terribly painful—­and which had taken place in direct disobedience to the husband’s positive injunctions.  ‘Sir,’ he had once said to the dean, ’I request that nothing may pass from your hands to the hands of my wife.’  ‘Tush, tush,’ the dean had answered.  ’I will have no tushing or pshawing on such a matter.  A man’s wife is his very own, the breath of his nostril, the blood