easy. But by degrees his feelings became less acute, and he accustomed himself to his friend Sowerby's mode of talking.
And then on the Saturday afternoon they all went over to Barchester. Harold Smith during the last forty-eight hours had become crammed to overflowing with Sarawak, Labuan, New Guinea, and the Salomon Islands. As is the case with all men laboring under temporary specialities, he for the time had faith in nothing else, and was not content that any one near him should have any other faith. They called him Viscount Papua and Baron Borneo; and his wife, who headed the joke against him, insisted on having her title. Miss Dunstable swore that she would wed none but a South Sea Islander; and to Mark was offered the income and duties of Bishop of Spices. Nor did the Proudie family set themselves against these little sarcastic quips with any overwhelming severity. It is sweet to unbend one's self 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 a while 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 Harold Smith himself.
For Mr. Harold Smith was in earnest, and did not quite relish these jocundities. He had an idea that he could in about three months talk the British world into civilizing New Guinea, and that the world of Barsetshire would be made to go with him by one night's efforts. He did not
