Anthony Trollope: Barchester Towers

33. CHAPTER XXXIII: MRS PROUDIE VICTRIX (continued)

'Renew it! I am very sorry you ever mentioned it. What will the archbishop think of that?'

'You may be sure, my dear, that the archbishop thought very little about it.'

'But why did you think about it, bishop? How could you think of making such a creature as that Dean of Barchester?--Dean of Barchester! I suppose he'll be looking for bishoprics some of these days--a man that hardly knows who his father was; a man that I found without bread to his mouth, or a coat to his back. Dean of Barchester indeed! I'll dean him.'

Mrs Proudie considered herself to be in politics a pure Whig; all her family belonged to the Whig party. Now among all ranks of Englishmen and Englishwomen (Mrs Proudie should, I think, be ranked among the former, on the score of her great strength of mind), no one is so hostile to lowly born pretenders to high station as the pure Whig.

The bishop thought it necessary to exculpate himself. 'Why, my dear,' said he, 'it appeared to me that you and Mr Slope did not get on quite as well as you used to do.'

'Get on!' said Mrs Proudie, moving her foot uneasily on the hearth-rug, and compressing her lips in a manner that betokened such danger to the subject of their discourse.

'I began to find that he was objectionable to you,'--Mrs Proudie's foot worked on the hearth-rug with great rapidity,--'and that you would be more comfortable if he was out of the palace,' Mrs Proudie smiled, as a hyena may probably smile before he begins his laugh,--'and therefore I thought that if he got this place, and so ceased to be my chaplain, you might be pleased at such an arrangement.'