they have of showing themselves to the Barchester world? Some few
old friends, such as the archdeacon and his wife, had called and had
found the doctor and his eldest daughter, but the _élite_ of the
family were not yet known.

The doctor indeed wished in his heart to prevent the signora from
accepting the bishop's invitation, but she herself had fully
determined that she would accept it. If her father was ashamed of
having his daughter carried into a bishop's palace, she had no such
feeling.

"Indeed, I shall," she had said to her sister who had gently
endeavoured to dissuade her, by saying that the company would consist
wholly of parsons and parsons' wives. "Parsons, I suppose, are much
the same as other men, if you strip them of their black coats; and as
to their wives, I dare say they won't trouble me. You may tell Papa
I don't at all mean to be left at home."

Papa was told, and felt that he could do nothing but yield. He also
felt that it was useless for him now to be ashamed of his children.
Such as they were, they had become such under his auspices; as he
had made his bed, so he must lie upon it; as he had sown his seed,
so must he reap his corn. He did not indeed utter such reflexions
in such language, but such was the gist of his thought. It was not
because Madeline was a cripple that he shrank from seeing her made
one of the bishop's guests, but because he knew that she would
practise her accustomed lures, and behave herself in a way that
could not fail of being distasteful to the propriety of Englishwomen.
These things had annoyed but not shocked him in Italy. There they
had shocked no one; but here in Barchester, here among his fellow