bitterness which his chaplain had occasioned. Let Mr. Slope do the
_fortiter in re_, he himself would pour in the _suaviter in modo_.

"Pray don't stir, Mr. Dean, pray don't stir," he said as the old man
essayed to get up; "I take it as a great kindness, your coming to
such an _omnium gatherum_ as this. But we have hardly got settled yet,
and Mrs. Proudie has not been able to see her friends as she would
wish to do. Well, Mr. Archdeacon, after all, we have not been so
hard upon you at Oxford."

"No," said the archdeacon, "you've only drawn our teeth and cut out
our tongues; you've allowed us still to breathe and swallow."

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the bishop; "it's not quite so easy to cut
out the tongue of an Oxford magnate--and as for teeth--ha, ha, ha!
Why, in the way we've left the matter, it's very odd if the heads
of colleges don't have their own way quite as fully as when the
hebdomadal board was in all its glory; what do you say, Mr. Dean?"

"An old man, my lord, never likes changes," said the dean.

"You must have been sad bunglers if it is so," said the archdeacon;
"and indeed, to tell the truth, I think you have bungled it. At any
rate, you must own this; you have not done the half what you boasted
you would do."

"Now, as regards your system of professors--" began the chancellor
slowly. He was never destined to get beyond such beginning.

"Talking of professors," said a soft clear voice, close behind