He is in earnest.

I never knew him tell a lie; and since he was six years old he has known how to call a spade a spade." "He'll make a good parson," said the mother.
"He'll be first in that, as he is in everything else," said the father.
"But he'll never be a bishop," said Mrs.Maberly.
"Why not ?" said the husband, indignantly.
"Because, as you say yourself, husband, he will call a spade a spade." "Bah! you are a radical," said the father.

"Go to sleep." At the time of John Thornton's illness, he had been ordained about a year and a-half.

He had got a title for orders, as a curate, in a remote part of Devon, but had left it in consequence of a violent disagreement with his rector, in which he had been most fully borne out by his uncle, who, by the bye, was not the sort of man who would have supported his own brother, had he been in the wrong.

Since then Frank Maberly had been staying with his uncle, and, as he expressed it, "working the slums" at Exeter.
Miss Thornton sat in the drawing-room at Drumston the day after Tom's visit to the Bishop, waiting dinner for the new Curate.