MR AND MRS QUIVERFUL ARE MADE HAPPY. MR SLOPE ENCOURAGED BY THEPRESS
Before she started for Ullathorne, Mrs Proudie, careful soul, caused two letters to be written, one by herself and one by her lord, to the inhabitants of Puddingdale vicarage, which made happy the hearth of those within it.
As soon as the departure of the horses left the bishop's stable-groom free for other services, that humble denizen of the diocese started on the bishop's own pony with the two despatches.
We have had so many letters lately that we will spare ourselves these. That from the bishop was simply a request that Mr Quiverful would wait upon his lordship the next morning at 11 A.M.; and that from the lady was as simply a request that Mrs Quiverful would do the same by her, though it was couched in somewhat longer and more grandiloquent phraseology.
It had become a point of conscience with Mrs Proudie to urge the settlement of this great hospital question. She was resolved that Mr Quiverful should have it. She was resolved that there should be no more doubt or delay; no more refusals and resignations, nor more secret negotiations carried on by Mr Slope on his own account in opposition to her behests.
'Bishop,' she said, immediately after breakfast, on the morning of that eventful day, 'have you signed the appointment yet?'
'No, my dear, not yet; it is not exactly signed as yet.'
'Then do it,' said the lady.
The bishop did it; and a very pleasant day indeed he spent at Ullathorne. And when he got home he had a glass of hot negus in his wife's sitting-room, and read the last number of the 'Little Dorrit' of the day with great inward satisfaction. Oh, husbands, oh, my marital friends, what great comfort is there to be derived from a wife well obeyed!
Much perturbation and flutter, high expectation and renewed hopes, were occasioned at Puddingdale, by the receipt of those episcopal dispatches. Mrs Quiverful, whose careful ear caught the sound of the pony's feet as he trotted up to the vicarage kitchen door, brought them in hurriedly to her husband. She was at the moment concocting the Irish stew destined to satisfy the noonday want of fourteen young birds, let alone the parent couple. She had taken the letters from the man's hands between the folds of her capacious apron, so as to save them from the contamination of the stew, and in this guise she brought them to her husband's desk.
They at once divided the spoil, each taking that addressed to the others. 'Quiverful,'said she with impressive voice, 'you are to be at the palace at eleven to-morrow.'
'And so are you, my dear,' said he, almost gasping with the importance of the tidings: and then they exchanged letters.
'She'd never have sent for me again,' said the lady, 'if it wasn't all right.'
'Oh! My dear, don't be too certain,' said the gentleman. 'Only think if it should be wrong.'
'She'd never have sent for me, Q., if it wasn't all right,' again argued the lady. 'She's stiff and hard and proud as pie-crust, but I think she's right at bottom.' Such was Mrs Quiverful's verdict about Mrs Proudie, to which in after times she always adhered.
People when they get their income doubled usually think that those through whose instrumentality this little ceremony is performed are right at bottom.
'Oh, Letty!' said Mr Quiverful, rising from his well-worn seat.
'Oh, Q!' said Mrs Quiverful; and then the two, unmindful of the kitchen apron, the greasy fingers, and the adherent Irish stew, threw themselves warmly into each other's arms.
'For heaven's sake, don't let any one cajole you out of it again,'
said the wife.
'Let me alone for that,' said the husband, with a look of almost fierce determination, pressing his fist as he spoke rigidly on his desk, as though he had Mr Slope's head below his knuckles, and meant to keep it there.
'I wonder how soon it will be,' said she.
'I wonder whether it will be at all,' said he, still doubtful.
'Well, I won't say too much,' said the lady. 'The cup has slipped twice before, and it may fall altogether this time; but I'll not believe it. He'll give you the appointment to-morrow. You'll find he will.'
'Heaven send he may,' said Mr Quiverful, solemnly. And who that considers the weight of the burden on this man's back, will say that the prayer was an improper one? There were fourteen of them--fourteen of them living--as Mrs Quiverful had so powerfully urged in the presence of the bishop's wife. As long as promotion cometh from any human source, whether north or south, east or west, will not such a claim as this hold good, in spite of all our examination tests, detur digniori's and optimist tendencies? It is fervently to be hoped that it may. Till we can become divine we must be content to be human, lest in our hurry for change we sink to something lower.
And then the pair sitting down lovingly together, talked over all their difficulties, as they so often did, and all their hopes, as they so seldom were able to do.
'You had better call on that man, Q, as you come away from the palace,' said Mrs Quiverful, pointing to an angry call for money from the Barchester draper, which the postman had left at the vicarage that morning. Cormorant that he was, unjust, hungry cormorant! When rumour first got abroad that the Quiverfuls were to go to the hospital this fellow with fawning eagerness had pressed his goods upon the wants of the poor clergyman. He had done so, feeling that he should be paid from the hospital funds, and flattering himself that a man with fourteen children, and money wherewithal to clothe them, could not but be an excellent customer.
As soon as the second rumour reached him, he applied for his money angrily.
