Anthony Trollope: Barchester Towers

11. CHAPTER XI: MRS PROUDIE'S RECEPTION--CONCLUDED (continued)

There was no answering this. Dignified clergymen of sixty years of age could not condescend to discuss such a matter with a young man with such clothes and such a beard.

'Have you got good water out at Plumstead, Mr Archdeacon?' said the bishop by way of changing the conversation.

'Pretty good,' said the archdeacon.

'But by no means so good as his wine, my lord,' said a witty minor canon.

'Nor so generally used,' said another; 'that is for inward application.'

'Ha, ha, ha!' laughed the bishop, 'a good cellar of wine is a very comfortable thing in a house.'

'Your German professors, sir, prefer beer, I believe,' said the sarcastic little meagre prebendary.

'They don't think much of either,' said Ethelbert; 'and that perhaps accounts for their superiority. Now the Jewish professor -'

The insult was becoming too deep for the spirit of Oxford to endure, so the archdeacon walked off one way and the chancellor another, followed by their disciples, and the bishop and the young reformer were left together on the hearth-rug.

'I was a Jew once myself,' said Bertie.

The bishop was determined not to stand another examination, or be led on any terms into Palestine; so he again remembered that he had to do something very particular, and left young Stanhope with the dean. The dean did not get the worst of it, for Ethelbert gave him a true account of his remarkable doings in the Holy Land.

'Oh, Mr Harding,' said the bishop, overtaking the ci-devant warden; 'I wanted to say one word about the hospital. You know, of course, that it is to be filled up.'

Mr Harding's heart beat a little, and he said that he had heard so.