Nor did the Proudie family set themselves against these little sarcastic quips with any overwhelming severity.

It is sweet to unbend oneself at the proper opportunity, and this was the proper opportunity for Mrs.
Proudie's unbending.

No mortal can be seriously wise at all hours; and in these happy hours did that usually wise mortal, the bishop, lay aside for awhile his serious wisdom.
"We think of dining at five to-morrow, my Lady Papua," said the facetious bishop; "will that suit his lordship and the affairs of State?
he! he! he!" And the good prelate laughed at the fun.

How pleasantly young men and women of fifty or thereabouts can joke and flirt and poke their fun about, laughing and holding their sides, dealing in little innuendoes and rejoicing in nicknames, when they have no Mentors of twenty-five or thirty near them to keep them in order! The vicar of Framley might perhaps have been regarded as such a Mentor, were it not for that capability of adapting himself to the company immediately around him on which he so much piqued himself.
He therefore also talked to my Lady Papua, and was jocose about the Baron,--not altogether to the satisfaction of Mr.Harold Smith himself.

For Mr.Harold Smith was in earnest, and did not quite relish these jocundities.