Page:The Warden.djvu/140

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132
THE WARDEN.

cession in his favour, nor did she mention the price she was to pay for it.

The warden did not express himself peculiarly gratified at this intelligence, and Eleanor, though she had not worked for thanks, and was by no means disposed to magnify her own good offices, felt hurt at the manner in which her news was received.

"Mr. Bold can act as he thinks proper, my love," said he; "if Mr. Bold thinks that he has been wrong, of course he will discontinue what he is doing; but that cannot change my purpose."

"Oh, papa!" she exclaimed, all but crying with vexation—"I thought you would have been so happy—I thought all would have been right now."

"Mr. Bold," continued he, "has set great people to work; so great that I doubt they are now beyond his control. Read that, my dear:" and the warden, doubling up a number of the Jupiter, pointed to the peculiar article which she was to read. It was to the last of the three leaders, which are generally furnished daily for the support of the nation, that Mr. Harding directed her attention. It dealt some heavy blows on various clerical delinquents; on families who had received their tens of thousands yearly for doing nothing; on men who, as the article stated, rolled in wealth which they had neither earned nor inherited, and which was in fact stolen from the poorer clergy. It named some sons of bishops, and grandsons of archbishops; men great in their way, who had redeemed their disgrace in the eyes of many by the enormity of their plunder; and then, having disposed of these leviathans, it descended to Mr. Harding.

"We alluded some few weeks since to an instance of similar injustice, though in a more humble scale, in which the warden of an almshouse at Barchester has become possessed of the