"There! that's seven by the cathedral," said Harold Smith, jumping up from his chair as he heard the clock. "If the people have come, it would not be right in me to keep them waiting, and I shall go."
"Just one glass of claret, Mr. Smith, and we'll be off," said the bishop.
"Those women will keep me an hour," said Harold, filling his glass, and drinking it standing. "They do it on purpose." He was thinking of his wife, but it seemed to the bishop as though his guest were actually speaking of Mrs. Proudie!
It was rather late when they all found themselves in the big room of the Mechanics' Institute; but I do not know whether this, on the whole, did them any harm. Most of Mr. Smith's hearers, excepting the party from the palace, were Barchester tradesmen, with their wives and families, and they waited, not impatiently, for the big people. And then the lecture was gratis—a fact which is always borne in mind by an Englishman when he comes to reckon up and calculate the way in which he is treated. When he pays his money, then he takes his choice; he may be impatient or not, as he likes. His sense of justice teaches him so much, and in accordance with that sense he usually acts.
So the people on the benches rose graciously when the palace party entered the room. Seats for them had been kept in the front. There were three arm-chairs, which were filled, after some little hesitation, by the bishop, Mrs. Proudie, and Miss Dunstable—Mrs. Smith positively declining to take one of them, though, as she admitted, her rank as Lady Papua of the islands did give her some claim. And this remark, as it was made quite out loud, reached Mr. Smith's ears as he stood behind a little table on a small raised dais, holding his white kid gloves, and it annoyed him and rather put him out. He did not like that joke about Lady Papua.
And then the others of the party sat upon a front bench covered with red cloth. "We shall find this very hard and very narrow about the second hour," said Mr. Sowerby, and Mr. Smith on his dais again overheard the words, and dashed his gloves down to the table. He felt that all the room would hear it.
And there were one or two gentlemen on the second
