he was to exercise his calling, and for many years he performed the
easy but not highly paid duties of a minor canon. At the age of forty
a small living in the close vicinity of the town increased both his
work and his income, and at the age of fifty he became precentor of
the cathedral.

Mr Harding had married early in life, and was the father of two
daughters. The eldest, Susan, was born soon after his marriage; the
other, Eleanor, not till ten years later.

At the time at which we introduce him to our readers he was living as
precentor at Barchester with his youngest daughter, then twenty-four
years of age; having been many years a widower, and having married his
eldest daughter to a son of the bishop a very short time before his
installation to the office of precentor.

Scandal at Barchester affirmed that had it not been for the beauty of
his daughter, Mr Harding would have remained a minor canon; but here
probably Scandal lied, as she so often does; for even as a minor canon
no one had been more popular among his reverend brethren in the close
than Mr Harding; and Scandal, before she had reprobated Mr Harding for
being made precentor by his friend the bishop, had loudly blamed the
bishop for having so long omitted to do something for his friend Mr
Harding. Be this as it may, Susan Harding, some twelve years since,
had married the Rev. Dr Theophilus Grantly, son of the bishop,
archdeacon of Barchester, and rector of Plumstead Episcopi, and her
father became, a few months later, precentor of Barchester Cathedral,
that office being, as is not unusual, in the bishop's gift.

Now there are peculiar circumstances connected with the precentorship