For some time Mrs. Proudie was much at a loss to know by what sort of party or entertainment she would make herself famous. Balls and suppers were of course out of the question. She did not object to her daughters dancing all night at other houses—at least, of late she had not objected, for the fashionable world required it, and the young ladies had perhaps a will of their own—but dancing at her house—absolutely under the shade of the bishop’s apron—would be a sin and a scandal. And then as to suppers—of all modes in which one may extend one’s hospitality to a large acquaintance, they are the most costly. “It is horrid to think that we should go out among our friends for the mere sake of eating and drinking,” Mrs. Proudie would say to the clergymen’s wives from Barsetshire. “It shows such a sensual propensity.” “Indeed it does, Mrs. Proudie; and is so vulgar too!” those ladies would reply. But the elder among them would remember with regret the unsparing, open-handed hospitality of Barchester palace in the good old days of Bishop Grantly—God rest his soul! One old vicar’s wife there was whose answer had not been so courteous— “When we are hungry, Mrs. Proudie,” she had said, “we do all have sensual propensities.” “It would be much better, Mrs. Athill, if the world would provide for all that at home,” Mrs. Proudie had rapidly replied; with which opinion I must here profess that I cannot by any means bring myself to coincide. But a conversazione would give play to no sensual propensity, nor occasion that intolerable expense which the gratification of sensual propensities too often produces. Mrs. Proudie felt that the word was not all that she could have desired. It was a little faded by old use and present oblivion, and seemed to address itself to that portion of the London world that is considered blue, rather than fashionable. But, nevertheless, there was a spirituality about it which suited her, and one may also say an economy. And then as regarded fashion, it might perhaps not be beyond the power of a Mrs. Proudie to regild the word with a newly burnished gilding. Some leading person must produce fashion at first hand, and why not Mrs. Proudie?