the fact before Eleanor had half-finished her wing. The old lady prescribed at once a receipt which had been much in vogue in the young days of her grandmother, and warned Eleanor with solemn voice against the fallacies of modern medicine.
“Take his coral, my dear,” said she, “and rub it well with carrot-juice; rub it till the juice dries on it, and then give it him to play with—”
“But he hasn’t got a coral,” said Eleanor.
“Not got a coral!” said Miss Thorne with almost angry vehemence. “Not got a coral—how can you expect that he should cut his teeth? Have you got Daffy’s Elixir?”
Eleanor explained that she had not. It had not been ordered by Mr. Rerechild, the Barchester doctor whom she employed; and then the young mother mentioned some shockingly modern succedaneum which Mr. Rerechild’s new lights had taught him to recommend.
Miss Thorne looked awfully severe. “Take care, my dear,” said she, “that the man knows what he’s about; take care he doesn’t destroy your little boy. But”—and she softened into sorrow, as she said it, and spoke more in pity than in anger—”but I don’t know who there is in Barchester now that you can trust. Poor dear old Doctor Bumpwell, indeed—”
“Why, Miss Thorne, he died when I was a little girl.”
“Yes, my dear, he did, and an unfortunate day it was for Barchester. As to those young men that have come up since”—Mr. Rerechild, by the by, was quite as old as Miss Thorne herself—”one doesn’t know where they came from or who they are, or whether they know anything about their business or not.”
“I think there are very clever men in Barchester,” said Eleanor.
“Perhaps there may be; only I don’t know them: and it’s admitted on all sides that medical men aren’t now what they used to be. They used to be talented, observing, educated men. But now any whipper-snapper out of an apothecary’s shop can call himself a doctor. I believe no kind of education is now thought necessary.”
Eleanor was herself the widow of a medical man and felt a little inclined to resent all these hard sayings. But Miss Thorne was so essentially good-natured that it was impossible to resent anything she said. She therefore sipped her wine and finished her chicken.
“At any rate, my dear, don’t forget the carrot-juice, and by all means get him a coral at once. My grandmother Thorne had the best teeth in the county and carried them to the grave with her at eighty. I have heard her say it was all the carrot-juice. She couldn’t bear the Barchester doctors. Even poor old Dr. Bumpwell didn’t please her.” It clearly never occurred to Miss Thorne that some fifty years ago Dr. Bumpwell was only a rising man and therefore as much in need of character in the eyes of the then ladies of Ullathorne as the present doctors were in her own.
The archdeacon made a very good lunch, and talked to his host about turnip-drillers and new machines for reaping, while the host, thinking it only polite to attend to a stranger, and fearing that perhaps he might not care about turnip crops on a Sunday, mooted all manner of ecclesiastical subjects.
“I never saw a heavier lot of wheat, Thorne, than you’ve got there in that field beyond the copse. I suppose that’s guano,” said the archdeacon.
“Yes, guano. I get it from Bristol myself. You’ll find you often have a tolerable congregation of Barchester people out here, Mr. Arabin. They are very fond of St. Ewold’s, particularly of an afternoon when the weather is not too hot for the walk.”
“I am under an obligation to them for staying away to-day, at any rate,” said the vicar. “The congregation can never be too small for a maiden sermon.”
“I got a ton and a half at Bradley’s in High Street,” said the archdeacon, “and it was a complete take in. I don’t believe there was five hundredweight of guano in it.”
“That Bradley never has anything good,” said Miss Thorne, who had just caught the name during her whisperings with Eleanor. “And such a nice shop as there used to be in that very house before he came. Wilfred, don’t you remember what good things old Ambleoff used to have?”
“There have been three men since Ambleoff’s time,” said the archdeacon, “and each as bad as the other. But who gets it for you at Bristol, Thorne?”
“I ran up myself this year and bought it out of the ship. I am afraid as the evenings get shorter, Mr. Arabin, you’ll find the reading-desk too dark. I must send a fellow with an axe and make him lop off some of those branches.”
Mr. Arabin declared that the morning light at any rate was perfect, and deprecated any interference with the lime-trees. And then they took a stroll out among the trim parterres, and Mr. Arabin explained to Mrs. Bold the difference between a naiad and a dryad, and dilated on vases and the shapes of urns. Miss Thorne busied herself among her pansies, and her brother, finding it quite impracticable to give anything of a peculiarly Sunday tone to the conversation, abandoned the attempt and had it out with the archdeacon about the Bristol guano.
At three o’clock they again went into church, and now Mr. Arabin read the service and the archdeacon preached. Nearly the same congregation was present, with some adventurous pedestrians from the city, who had not thought the heat of the midday August sun too great to deter them. The archdeacon took his text from the epistle to Philemon. “I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds.” From such a text it may be imagined the kind of sermon which Dr. Grantly preached, and on the whole it was neither dull, nor bad, nor out of place.
He told them that it had become his duty to look about for a pastor for them, to supply the place of one who had been long among them, and that in this manner he regarded as a son him whom he had selected, as St. Paul had regarded the young disciple whom he sent forth. Then he took a little merit to himself for having studiously provided the best man he could without reference to patronage or favour; but he did not say that the best man according to his views was he who was best able to subdue Mr. Slope, and make that gentleman’s situation in Barchester too hot to be comfortable. As to the bonds, they had consisted in the exceeding struggle which he had made to get a good clergyman for them. He deprecated any comparison between himself and St. Paul, but said that he was entitled to beseech them for their goodwill towards Mr. Arabin, in the same manner that the apostle had besought Philemon and his household with regard to Onesimus.
The archdeacon’s sermon—text, blessing, and all—was concluded within the half-hour. Then they shook hands with their Ullathorne friends and returned to Plumstead. ‘Twas thus that Mr. Arabin read himself in at St. Ewold’s.
