I say, Mark, you must talk it over with the women, and see what can be done for them.

Lucy tells me that they're so poor, that if they have bread to eat, it's as much as they have." On this evening Archdeacon Grantly and his wife dined and slept at Framley Court, there having been a very long family friendship between old Lady Lufton and the Grantlys, and Dr.Thorne with his wife, from Chaldicotes, also dined at Framley.

There was also there another clergyman from Barchester, Mr.Champion, one of the prebends of the cathedral.

There were only three now who had houses in the city since the retrenchments of the ecclesiastical commission had come into full force.

And this Mr.Champion was dear to the Dowager Lady Lufton, because he carried on worthily the clerical war against the bishop which had raged in Barsetshire ever since Dr.Proudie had come there,--which war old Lady Lufton, good and pious and charitable as she was, considered that she was bound to keep up, even to the knife, till Dr.Proudie and all his satellites should have been banished into outer darkness.