Anthony Trollope: Barchester Towers

5. CHAPTER V: A MORNING VISIT (continued)

The bishop had a decided opinion that there should be pipes for hot water. Hot water was very essential for the comfort of the palace. It was, indeed, a requisite in any decent gentleman's house.

Mr Slope had remarked that the coping on the garden wall was in many places imperfect.

Mrs Proudie had discovered a large hole, evidently the work of rats, in the servants' hall.

The bishop expressed an utter detestation of rats. There was nothing, he believed, in this world, that he so much hated as a rat.

Mr Slope had, moreover, observed that the locks of the out-houses were very imperfect: he might specify the coal-cellar, and the wood-house.

Mrs Proudie had also seen that those on the doors of the servants' bedrooms were in an equally bad condition; indeed the locks all through the house were old-fashioned and unserviceable.

The bishop thought that a great deal depended on a good lock, and quite as much on the key. He had observed that the fault very often lay with the key, especially if the wards were in any way twisted.

Mr Slope was going on with his catalogue of grievances, when he was somewhat loudly interrupted by the archdeacon who succeeded in explaining that the diocesan architect, or rather his foreman, was the person to be addressed on such subjects; and that he, Dr Grantly, had inquired as to the comfort of the palace, merely as a point of compliment. He was very sorry, however, that so many things had been found amiss: and then he rose from his chair to escape.

Mrs Proudie, though she had contrived to lend her assistance in recapitulating the palatial dilapidations, had not on that account given up her hold of Mr Harding, nor ceased from her cross-examination as the iniquity of Sabbatical amusements. Over and over again had she thrown out her 'surely, surely,' at Mr Harding's devoted head, and ill had that gentleman been able to parry the attack.