discouraged. Services on saints' days she regarded as rank papacy, and had been known to accuse a clergyman's wife, to her face, of idolatry, because the poor lady had dated a letter, St. John's Eve. Mr. Thumble, on this Sunday evening, was successful in finding the bishop at home, and alone, but he was not lucky enough to get away before Mrs. Proudie returned. The bishop, perhaps, thought that the story of the failure had better reach his wife's ears from Mr. Thumble's lips than from his own.
"Well, Mr. Thumble?" said Mrs. Proudie, walking into the study, armed in her full Sunday-evening winter panoply, in which she had just descended from her carriage. The church which Mrs. Proudie attended in the evening was nearly half a mile from the palace, and the coachman and groom never got a holiday on Sunday night. She was gorgeous in a dark brown silk dress of awful stiffness and terrible dimensions; and on her shoulders she wore a short cloak of velvet and fur, very handsome withal, but so swelling in its proportions on all sides as necessarily to create more of dismay than of admiration in the mind of any ordinary man. And her bonnet was a monstrous helmet with the beaver up, displaying the awful face of the warrior, always ready for combat, and careless to guard itself from attack. The large contorted bows which she bore were as a grisly crest upon her casque, beautiful, doubtless, but majestic and fear-compelling. In her hand she carried her armour all complete, a prayer-book, a bible, and a book of hymns. These the footman had brought for her to the study door, but she had thought fit to enter her husband's room with them in her own custody.
"Well, Mr. Thumble!" she said.
Mr. Thumble did not answer at once, thinking, probably, that the bishop might choose to explain the circumstances. But, neither did the bishop say any thing.
"Well, Mr. Thumble?" she said again; and then she stood looking at the man who had failed so disastrously.
"I have explained to the bishop," said he. "Mr. Crawley has been contumacious,—very contumacious indeed."
"But you preached at Hogglestock?"
"No, indeed, Mrs. Proudie. Nor would it have been possible, unless I had had the police to assist me."
"Then you should have had the police. I never heard of anything so mismanaged in all my life,—never in all my life." And she put her books down on the study table, and turned herself round from Mr. Thumble towards the bishop. "If things go on like this, my
