"You have been very kind," said he, "to remain so long with my poor wife."
"We had a great many things to talk about after you went."
"It is very kind of you, for she does not often see a friend nowadays. Will you have the goodness to tell Mr. Robarts that I shall be here at the school at eleven o'clock to-morrow?"
And then he bowed, taking off his hat to them, and they drove on.
"If he really does care about her comfort, I shall not think so badly of him," said Lucy.
And now, about the end of April, news arrived almost simultaneously in all quarters of the habitable globe that was terrible in its import to one of the chief persons of our history—some may think to the chief person in it. All high parliamentary people will doubtless so think, and the wives and daughters of such. The Titans warring against the gods had been for a while successful. Typhœus and Mimas, Porphyrion and Rhœcus, the giant brood of old, steeped in ignorance and wedded to corruption, had scaled the heights of Olympus, assisted by that audacious flinger of deadly ponderous missiles, who stands ever ready armed with his terrific sling—Supplehouse, the Enceladus of the press. And in this universal cataclasm of the starry councils, what could a poor Diana do—Diana of the Petty Bag, but abandon her pride of place to some rude Orion? In other words, the ministry had been compelled to resign, and with them Mr. Harold Smith.
"And so poor Harold is out before he has well tasted the sweets of office," said Sowerby, writing to his friend the parson; "and, as far as I know, the only piece of Church patronage which has fallen in the way of the ministry since he joined it has made its way down to Framley—to my great joy and contentment." But it hardly tended to Mark's joy and contentment on the same subject that he should be so often reminded of the benefit conferred upon him.
