"My dear," he said, as he adjusted the copious folds of his nightcap, "there was that John Bold at your father's again to-day. I must say your father is very imprudent." "He is imprudent;--he always was," replied Mrs Grantly, speaking from under the comfortable bed-clothes. "There's nothing new in that." "No, my dear, there's nothing new;--I know that; but, at the present juncture of affairs, such imprudence is--is--I'll tell you what, my dear, if he does not take care what he's about, John Bold will be off with Eleanor." "I think he will, whether papa takes care or no; and why not?" "Why not!" almost screamed the archdeacon, giving so rough a pull at his nightcap as almost to bring it over his nose; "why not!--that pestilent, interfering upstart, John Bold;--the most vulgar young person I ever met! Do you know that he is meddling with your father's affairs in a most uncalled-for--most--" And being at a loss for an epithet sufficiently injurious, he finished his expressions of horror by muttering, "Good heavens!" in a manner that had been found very efficacious in clerical meetings of the diocese. He must for the moment have forgotten where he was. "As to his vulgarity, archdeacon" (Mrs Grantly had never assumed a more familiar term than this in addressing her husband), "I don't agree with you. Not that I like Mr Bold;--he is a great deal too conceited for me; but then Eleanor does, and it would be the best thing in the world for papa if they were to marry. Bold would never trouble himself about Hiram's Hospital if he were papa's son-in-law." And the lady turned herself round under the bed-clothes, in a manner to which the doctor was well accustomed, and which told him, as plainly as words, that as far as she was concerned the subject was over for that night. "Good heavens!" murmured the doctor again;--he was evidently much put beside himself. Dr Grantly is by no means a bad man; he is exactly the man which such an education as his was most likely to form; his intellect being sufficient for such a place in the world, but not sufficient to put him in advance of it. He performs with a rigid constancy such of the duties of a parish clergyman as are, to his thinking, above the sphere of his curate, but it is as an archdeacon that he shines.