“After all, you’re a figure in London,” she said. “You have power and influence. For my part I have wondered that you contemplated leaving it for an obscure country town like Barchester. I shouldn’t have been at all surprised if you’d refused the bishopric.”
He breathed more freely, and with his quick and happy optimism began already to see things more genially.
“Besides, we Sprattes are somebody in the world,” concluded Lady Sophia, with a smile, the faint irony of which he did not see. “I don’t think you would show a proper spirit if you allowed yourself to be trampled on.”
“Ah, Sophia, I knew that at the bottom of your heart you were as proud of your stock as I. You’re quite right. I owe it to my family as well as to myself not to allow them to thrust me into obscurity. I shall refuse the deanery, Sophia; and Lord Stonehenge----”
“Can go to the devil,” she added, quietly.
Canon Spratte smiled with all his old vivacity.
“Sophia, I thank you. It is not right that I should say such things, but you have entirely expressed my sentiments.”
“Why don’t you sit down and write the letter at once?”
Without answering, the Canon seated himself, and presently showed to Lady Sophia, for her approval, the following reply.
_I have weighed your very considerate proposal most anxiously and have given full weight to what you urge. I fully appreciate the kind motive which offered me the opportunity of removing to a position both of leisure and of dignity. I am sure you will not think that I have lightly set aside the offer made me; but I am doubtful whether my health would stand the asperities of a Welsh climate. And I have to consider that a very great assistance to me in the performance of my present duties is derived from the complete knowledge of my work in London._ _I fear that I might find the distant and untried labours of St. Olphert’s less congenial. And I feel that without some very strong counter-balancing reason, it is not desirable that I should leave plans which I have begun, but scarcely matured, in the Metropolis._
_Believe me to be, with very grateful thanks, dear Lord Stonehenge,_
_Your faithful and obedient servant, THEODORE SPRATTE_
Lady Sophia smiled when she read that last sentence in which he wisely left himself an escape, whereby he might with dignity abandon London, if a bishopric in the future were offered to him. Obviously the comfortable hope had returned that in the end his merits would receive their just reward. She gave back the letter.