’A day or two will see the end of it, archdeacon; I should say a day or two,’ said the doctor, as he met Dr Grantly in the hall.  ’I should say that a day or two will see the end of it.  Indeed I will not undertake that twenty-four hours may not see the close of his earthly troubles.  He has no suffering, no pain, no disturbing cause.  Nature simply retires to rest.’  Dr Filgrave, as he said this, made a slow falling motion with his hands, which alone on various occasions had been thought to be worth all the money paid for his attendance.  ’Perhaps you would wish that I should step in this evening, Mr Dean?  As it happens, I shall be at liberty.’  The dean of course said that he would take it as an additional favour.  Neither the dean nor the archdeacon had the slightest belief in Dr Filgrave, and yet they would hardly have been contented that their father-in-law should have departed without him.

‘Look at that man, now,’ said the archdeacon, when the doctor had gone, ’who talks so glibly about nature going to rest.  I’ve known him all my life.  He’s an older man by some months than our dear old friend upstairs.  And he looks as if he were going to attend death-beds in Barchester for ever.’

‘I suppose he is right in what he tells us now?’ said the dean.

‘No doubt he is; but my belief doesn’t come from his saying it.’  Then there was a pause as the two church dignitaries sat together, doing nothing, feeling that the solemnity of the moment was such that it would be hardly becoming that they should even attempt to read.  ’His going will make an old man of me,’ said the archdeacon.  ’It will be different with you.’

‘It will make an old woman of Eleanor, I fear.’

‘I seem to have known him all my life,’ said the archdeacon.  ’I have known him ever since I left college; and I have known him as one man seldom does know another.  There is nothing that he has done—­as I believe nothing that he has thought—­with which I have not been cognisant.  I feel sure that he never had an impure fancy in his mind, or a faulty wish in his heart.  His tenderness has surpassed the tenderness of a woman; and yet, when occasion came for showing it, he had all the spirit of a hero.  I shall never forget his resignation of the hospital, and all that I did and said to make him keep it.’

‘But he was right?’

’As Septimus Harding he was, I think, right; but it would have been wrong in any other man.  And he was right, too, about the deanery.’  For promotion had come in Mr Harding’s way, and he, too, might have been Dean of Barchester.  ’The fact is, he never was wrong.  He couldn’t go wrong.  He lacked guile, and he feared God—­and a man who does both will never go far astray.  I don’t think he ever coveted aught in his life—­except a new case for his violoncello and somebody to listen to him when he played it.’  Then the archdeacon got up, and walked about the room in his enthusiasm; and, perhaps, as he walked some thoughts as to the sterner ambition of his own life passed through his mind.  What things had he coveted?  Had he lacked guile?  He told himself that had feared God—­but he was not sure that he was telling himself true even in that.