Chapter: "How happy is he born and taught
     That serveth not another's will;
     Whose armor is his honest thought,
     And simple truth his only skill!
        .   .   .   .   .   .   .
     This man is freed from servile bands
     Of hope to rise or fear to fall;
     Lord of himself though not of lands;
     And having nothing yet hath all."
                             --SIR HENRY WOTTON.


Dorothea's confidence in Caleb Garth's knowledge, which had begun on
her hearing that he approved of her cottages, had grown fast during her
stay at Freshitt, Sir James having induced her to take rides over the
two estates in company with himself and Caleb, who quite returned her
admiration, and told his wife that Mrs. Casaubon had a head for
business most uncommon in a woman.  It must be remembered that by
"business" Caleb never meant money transactions, but the skilful
application of labor.

"Most uncommon!" repeated Caleb.  "She said a thing I often used to
think myself when I was a lad:--'Mr. Garth, I should like to feel, if I
lived to be old, that I had improved a great piece of land and built a
great many good cottages, because the work is of a healthy kind while
it is being done, and after it is done, men are the better for it.'
Those were the very words: she sees into things in that way."

"But womanly, I hope," said Mrs. Garth, half suspecting that Mrs.
Casaubon might not hold the true principle of subordination.

"Oh, you can't think!" said Caleb, shaking his head.  "You would like
to hear her speak, Susan.  She speaks in such plain words, and a voice
like music.  Bless me! it reminds me of bits in the 'Messiah'--'and
straightway there appeared a multitude of the heavenly host, praising
God and saying;' it has a tone with it that satisfies your ear."

Caleb was very fond of music, and when he could afford it went to hear
an oratorio that came within his reach, returning from it with a
profound reverence for this mighty structure of tones, which made him
sit meditatively, looking on the floor and throwing much unutterable
language into his outstretched hands.

With this good understanding between them, it was natural that Dorothea
asked Mr. Garth to undertake any business connected with the three
farms and the numerous tenements attached to Lowick Manor; indeed, his
expectation of getting work for two was being fast fulfilled.  As he
said, "Business breeds."  And one form of business which was beginning
to breed just then was the construction of railways.  A projected line
was to run through Lowick parish where the cattle had hitherto grazed
in a peace unbroken by astonishment; and thus it happened that the
infant struggles of the railway system entered into the affairs of
Caleb Garth, and determined the course of this history with regard to
two persons who were dear to him.  The submarine railway may have its
difficulties; but the bed of the sea is not divided among various
landed proprietors with claims for damages not only measurable but
sentimental.  In the hundred to which Middlemarch belonged railways
were as exciting a topic as the Reform Bill or the imminent horrors of
Cholera, and those who held the most decided views on the subject were
women and landholders.  Women both old and young regarded travelling by
steam as presumptuous and dangerous, and argued against it by saying
that nothing should induce them to get into a railway carriage; while
proprietors, differing from each other in their arguments as much as
Mr. Solomon Featherstone differed from Lord Medlicote, were yet
unanimous in the opinion that in selling land, whether to the Enemy of
mankind or to a company obliged to purchase, these pernicious agencies
must be made to pay a very high price to landowners for permission to
injure mankind.

But the slower wits, such as Mr. Solomon and Mrs. Waule, who both
occupied land of their own, took a long time to arrive at this
conclusion, their minds halting at the vivid conception of what it
would be to cut the Big Pasture in two, and turn it into three-cornered
bits, which would be "nohow;" while accommodation-bridges and high
payments were remote and incredible.

"The cows will all cast their calves, brother," said Mrs. Waule, in a
tone of deep melancholy, "if the railway comes across the Near Close;
and I shouldn't wonder at the mare too, if she was in foal.  It's a
poor tale if a widow's property is to be spaded away, and the law say
nothing to it.  What's to hinder 'em from cutting right and left if
they begin?  It's well known, _I_ can't fight."

"The best way would be to say nothing, and set somebody on to send 'em
away with a flea in their ear, when they came spying and measuring,"
said Solomon.  "Folks did that about Brassing, by what I can
understand.  It's all a pretence, if the truth was known, about their
being forced to take one way.  Let 'em go cutting in another parish.
And I don't believe in any pay to make amends for bringing a lot of
ruffians to trample your crops.  Where's a company's pocket?"

"Brother Peter, God forgive him, got money out of a company," said Mrs.
Waule.  "But that was for the manganese.  That wasn't for railways to
blow you to pieces right and left."

"Well, there's this to be said, Jane," Mr. Solomon concluded, lowering
his voice in a cautious manner--"the more spokes we put in their wheel,
the more they'll pay us to let 'em go on, if they must come whether or
not."

This reasoning of Mr. Solomon's was perhaps less thorough than he
imagined, his cunning bearing about the same relation to the course of
railways as the cunning of a diplomatist bears to the general chill or
catarrh of the solar system.  But he set about acting on his views in a
thoroughly diplomatic manner, by stimulating suspicion.  His side of
Lowick was the most remote from the village, and the houses of the
laboring people were either lone cottages or were collected in a hamlet
called Frick, where a water-mill and some stone-pits made a little
centre of slow, heavy-shouldered industry.

In the absence of any precise idea as to what railways were, public
opinion in Frick was against them; for the human mind in that grassy
corner had not the proverbial tendency to admire the unknown, holding
rather that it was likely to be against the poor man, and that
suspicion was the only wise attitude with regard to it.  Even the rumor
of Reform had not yet excited any millennial expectations in Frick,
there being no definite promise in it, as of gratuitous grains to
fatten Hiram Ford's pig, or of a publican at the "Weights and Scales"
who would brew beer for nothing, or of an offer on the part of the
three neighboring farmers to raise wages during winter.  And without
distinct good of this kind in its promises, Reform seemed on a footing
with the bragging of pedlers, which was a hint for distrust to every
knowing person.  The men of Frick were not ill-fed, and were less given
to fanaticism than to a strong muscular suspicion; less inclined to
believe that they were peculiarly cared for by heaven, than to regard
heaven itself as rather disposed to take them in--a disposition
observable in the weather.

Thus the mind of Frick was exactly of the sort for Mr. Solomon
Featherstone to work upon, he having more plenteous ideas of the same
order, with a suspicion of heaven and earth which was better fed and
more entirely at leisure.  Solomon was overseer of the roads at that
time, and on his slow-paced cob often took his rounds by Frick to look
at the workmen getting the stones there, pausing with a mysterious
deliberation, which might have misled you into supposing that he had
some other reason for staying than the mere want of impulse to move.
After looking for a long while at any work that was going on, he would
raise his eyes a little and look at the horizon; finally he would shake
his bridle, touch his horse with the whip, and get it to move slowly
onward.  The hour-hand of a clock was quick by comparison with Mr.
Solomon, who had an agreeable sense that he could afford to be slow.
He was in the habit of pausing for a cautious, vaguely designing chat
with every hedger or ditcher on his way, and was especially willing to
listen even to news which he had heard before, feeling himself at an
advantage over all narrators in partially disbelieving them.  One day,
however, he got into a dialogue with Hiram Ford, a wagoner, in which he
himself contributed information.  He wished to know whether Hiram had
seen fellows with staves and instruments spying about: they called
themselves railroad people, but there was no telling what they were or
what they meant to do.  The least they pretended was that they were
going to cut Lowick Parish into sixes and sevens.

"Why, there'll be no stirrin' from one pla-ace to another," said Hiram,
thinking of his wagon and horses.

"Not a bit," said Mr. Solomon.  "And cutting up fine land such as this
parish!  Let 'em go into Tipton, say I. But there's no knowing what
there is at the bottom of it.  Traffic is what they put for'ard; but
it's to do harm to the land and the poor man in the long-run."

"Why, they're Lunnon chaps, I reckon," said Hiram, who had a dim notion
of London as a centre of hostility to the country.

"Ay, to be sure.  And in some parts against Brassing, by what I've
heard say, the folks fell on 'em when they were spying, and broke their
peep-holes as they carry, and drove 'em away, so as they knew better
than come again."

"It war good foon, I'd be bound," said Hiram, whose fun was much
restricted by circumstances.

"Well, I wouldn't meddle with 'em myself," said Solomon.  "But some say
this country's seen its best days, and the sign is, as it's being
overrun with these fellows trampling right and left, and wanting to cut
it up into railways; and all for the big traffic to swallow up the
little, so as there shan't be a team left on the land, nor a whip to
crack."

"I'll crack _my_ whip about their ear'n, afore they bring it to that,
though," said Hiram, while Mr. Solomon, shaking his bridle, moved
onward.

Nettle-seed needs no digging.  The ruin of this countryside by
railroads was discussed, not only at the "Weights and Scales," but in
the hay-field, where the muster of working hands gave opportunities for
talk such as were rarely had through the rural year.

One morning, not long after that interview between Mr. Farebrother and
Mary Garth, in which she confessed to him her feeling for Fred Vincy,
it happened that her father had some business which took him to
Yoddrell's farm in the direction of Frick: it was to measure and value
an outlying piece of land belonging to Lowick Manor, which Caleb
expected to dispose of advantageously for Dorothea (it must be
confessed that his bias was towards getting the best possible terms
from railroad companies). He put up his gig at Yoddrell's, and in
walking with his assistant and measuring-chain to the scene of his
work, he encountered the party of the company's agents, who were
adjusting their spirit-level. After a little chat he left them,
observing that by-and-by they would reach him again where he was going
to measure.  It was one of those gray mornings after light rains, which
become delicious about twelve o'clock, when the clouds part a little,
and the scent of the earth is sweet along the lanes and by the
hedgerows.

The scent would have been sweeter to Fred Vincy, who was coming along
the lanes on horseback, if his mind had not been worried by
unsuccessful efforts to imagine what he was to do, with his father on
one side expecting him straightway to enter the Church, with Mary on
the other threatening to forsake him if he did enter it, and with the
working-day world showing no eager need whatever of a young gentleman
without capital and generally unskilled.  It was the harder to Fred's
disposition because his father, satisfied that he was no longer
rebellious, was in good humor with him, and had sent him on this
pleasant ride to see after some greyhounds.  Even when he had fixed on
what he should do, there would be the task of telling his father.  But
it must be admitted that the fixing, which had to come first, was the
more difficult task:--what secular avocation on earth was there for a
young man (whose friends could not get him an "appointment") which was
at once gentlemanly, lucrative, and to be followed without special
knowledge?  Riding along the lanes by Frick in this mood, and
slackening his pace while he reflected whether he should venture to go
round by Lowick Parsonage to call on Mary, he could see over the hedges
from one field to another.  Suddenly a noise roused his attention, and
on the far side of a field on his left hand he could see six or seven
men in smock-frocks with hay-forks in their hands making an offensive
approach towards the four railway agents who were facing them, while
Caleb Garth and his assistant were hastening across the field to join
the threatened group.  Fred, delayed a few moments by having to find
the gate, could not gallop up to the spot before the party in
smock-frocks, whose work of turning the hay had not been too pressing
after swallowing their mid-day beer, were driving the men in coats
before them with their hay-forks; while Caleb Garth's assistant, a lad
of seventeen, who had snatched up the spirit-level at Caleb's order,
had been knocked down and seemed to be lying helpless.  The coated men
had the advantage as runners, and Fred covered their retreat by getting
in front of the smock-frocks and charging them suddenly enough to throw
their chase into confusion.  "What do you confounded fools mean?"
shouted Fred, pursuing the divided group in a zigzag, and cutting right
and left with his whip.  "I'll swear to every one of you before the
magistrate.  You've knocked the lad down and killed him, for what I
know.  You'll every one of you be hanged at the next assizes, if you
don't mind," said Fred, who afterwards laughed heartily as he
remembered his own phrases.

The laborers had been driven through the gate-way into their hay-field,
and Fred had checked his horse, when Hiram Ford, observing himself at a
safe challenging distance, turned back and shouted a defiance which he
did not know to be Homeric.

"Yo're a coward, yo are.  Yo git off your horse, young measter, and
I'll have a round wi' ye, I wull.  Yo daredn't come on wi'out your hoss
an' whip.  I'd soon knock the breath out on ye, I would."

"Wait a minute, and I'll come back presently, and have a round with you
all in turn, if you like," said Fred, who felt confidence in his power
of boxing with his dearly beloved brethren.  But just now he wanted to
hasten back to Caleb and the prostrate youth.

The lad's ankle was strained, and he was in much pain from it, but he
was no further hurt, and Fred placed him on the horse that he might
ride to Yoddrell's and be taken care of there.

"Let them put the horse in the stable, and tell the surveyors they can
come back for their traps," said Fred.  "The ground is clear now."

"No, no," said Caleb, "here's a breakage.  They'll have to give up for
to-day, and it will be as well.  Here, take the things before you on
the horse, Tom.  They'll see you coming, and they'll turn back."

"I'm glad I happened to be here at the right moment, Mr. Garth," said
Fred, as Tom rode away.  "No knowing what might have happened if the
cavalry had not come up in time."

"Ay, ay, it was lucky," said Caleb, speaking rather absently, and
looking towards the spot where he had been at work at the moment of
interruption.  "But--deuce take it--this is what comes of men being
fools--I'm hindered of my day's work.  I can't get along without
somebody to help me with the measuring-chain. However!" He was
beginning to move towards the spot with a look of vexation, as if he
had forgotten Fred's presence, but suddenly he turned round and said
quickly, "What have you got to do to-day, young fellow?"

"Nothing, Mr. Garth.  I'll help you with pleasure--can I?" said Fred,
with a sense that he should be courting Mary when he was helping her
father.

"Well, you mustn't mind stooping and getting hot."

"I don't mind anything.  Only I want to go first and have a round with
that hulky fellow who turned to challenge me.  It would be a good
lesson for him.  I shall not be five minutes."

"Nonsense!" said Caleb, with his most peremptory intonation.  "I shall
go and speak to the men myself.  It's all ignorance.  Somebody has been
telling them lies.  The poor fools don't know any better."

"I shall go with you, then," said Fred.

"No, no; stay where you are.  I don't want your young blood.  I can
take care of myself."

Caleb was a powerful man and knew little of any fear except the fear of
hurting others and the fear of having to speechify.  But he felt it his
duty at this moment to try and give a little harangue.  There was a
striking mixture in him--which came from his having always been a
hard-working man himself--of rigorous notions about workmen and
practical indulgence towards them.  To do a good day's work and to do
it well, he held to be part of their welfare, as it was the chief part
of his own happiness; but he had a strong sense of fellowship with
them.  When he advanced towards the laborers they had not gone to work
again, but were standing in that form of rural grouping which consists
in each turning a shoulder towards the other, at a distance of two or
three yards.  They looked rather sulkily at Caleb, who walked quickly
with one hand in his pocket and the other thrust between the buttons of
his waistcoat, and had his every-day mild air when he paused among them.

"Why, my lads, how's this?" he began, taking as usual to brief phrases,
which seemed pregnant to himself, because he had many thoughts lying
under them, like the abundant roots of a plant that just manages to
peep above the water.  "How came you to make such a mistake as this?
Somebody has been telling you lies.  You thought those men up there
wanted to do mischief."

"Aw!" was the answer, dropped at intervals by each according to his
degree of unreadiness.

"Nonsense!  No such thing!  They're looking out to see which way the
railroad is to take.  Now, my lads, you can't hinder the railroad: it
will be made whether you like it or not.  And if you go fighting
against it, you'll get yourselves into trouble.  The law gives those
men leave to come here on the land.  The owner has nothing to say
against it, and if you meddle with them you'll have to do with the
constable and Justice Blakesley, and with the handcuffs and Middlemarch
jail.  And you might be in for it now, if anybody informed against you."

Caleb paused here, and perhaps the greatest orator could not have
chosen either his pause or his images better for the occasion.

"But come, you didn't mean any harm.  Somebody told you the railroad
was a bad thing.  That was a lie.  It may do a bit of harm here and
there, to this and to that; and so does the sun in heaven.  But the
railway's a good thing."

"Aw! good for the big folks to make money out on," said old Timothy
Cooper, who had stayed behind turning his hay while the others had been
gone on their spree;--"I'n seen lots o' things turn up sin' I war a
young un--the war an' the peace, and the canells, an' the oald King
George, an' the Regen', an' the new King George, an' the new un as has
got a new ne-ame--an' it's been all aloike to the poor mon.  What's the
canells been t' him?  They'n brought him neyther me-at nor be-acon, nor
wage to lay by, if he didn't save it wi' clemmin' his own inside.
Times ha' got wusser for him sin' I war a young un.  An' so it'll be
wi' the railroads.  They'll on'y leave the poor mon furder behind.  But
them are fools as meddle, and so I told the chaps here.  This is the
big folks's world, this is.  But yo're for the big folks, Muster Garth,
yo are."

Timothy was a wiry old laborer, of a type lingering in those times--who
had his savings in a stocking-foot, lived in a lone cottage, and was
not to be wrought on by any oratory, having as little of the feudal
spirit, and believing as little, as if he had not been totally
unacquainted with the Age of Reason and the Rights of Man.  Caleb was
in a difficulty known to any person attempting in dark times and
unassisted by miracle to reason with rustics who are in possession of
an undeniable truth which they know through a hard process of feeling,
and can let it fall like a giant's club on your neatly carved argument
for a social benefit which they do not feel.  Caleb had no cant at
command, even if he could have chosen to use it; and he had been
accustomed to meet all such difficulties in no other way than by doing
his "business" faithfully.  He answered--

"If you don't think well of me, Tim, never mind; that's neither here
nor there now.  Things may be bad for the poor man--bad they are; but I
want the lads here not to do what will make things worse for
themselves.  The cattle may have a heavy load, but it won't help 'em to
throw it over into the roadside pit, when it's partly their own fodder."

"We war on'y for a bit o' foon," said Hiram, who was beginning to see
consequences.  "That war all we war arter."

"Well, promise me not to meddle again, and I'll see that nobody informs
against you."

"I'n ne'er meddled, an' I'n no call to promise," said Timothy.

"No, but the rest.  Come, I'm as hard at work as any of you to-day, and
I can't spare much time.  Say you'll be quiet without the constable."

"Aw, we wooant meddle--they may do as they loike for oos"--were the
forms in which Caleb got his pledges; and then he hastened back to
Fred, who had followed him, and watched him in the gateway.

They went to work, and Fred helped vigorously.  His spirits had risen,
and he heartily enjoyed a good slip in the moist earth under the
hedgerow, which soiled his perfect summer trousers.  Was it his
successful onset which had elated him, or the satisfaction of helping
Mary's father?  Something more.  The accidents of the morning had
helped his frustrated imagination to shape an employment for himself
which had several attractions.  I am not sure that certain fibres in
Mr. Garth's mind had not resumed their old vibration towards the very
end which now revealed itself to Fred.  For the effective accident is
but the touch of fire where there is oil and tow; and it always
appeared to Fred that the railway brought the needed touch.  But they
went on in silence except when their business demanded speech.  At
last, when they had finished and were walking away, Mr. Garth said--

"A young fellow needn't be a B. A. to do this sort of work, eh, Fred?"

"I wish I had taken to it before I had thought of being a B. A.," said
Fred.  He paused a moment, and then added, more hesitatingly, "Do you
think I am too old to learn your business, Mr. Garth?"

"My business is of many sorts, my boy," said Mr. Garth, smiling.  "A
good deal of what I know can only come from experience: you can't learn
it off as you learn things out of a book.  But you are young enough to
lay a foundation yet."  Caleb pronounced the last sentence
emphatically, but paused in some uncertainty.  He had been under the
impression lately that Fred had made up his mind to enter the Church.

"You do think I could do some good at it, if I were to try?" said Fred,
more eagerly.

"That depends," said Caleb, turning his head on one side and lowering
his voice, with the air of a man who felt himself to be saying
something deeply religious.  "You must be sure of two things: you must
love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting
your play to begin.  And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your
work, and think it would be more honorable to you to be doing something
else.  You must have a pride in your own work and in learning to do it
well, and not be always saying, There's this and there's that--if I had
this or that to do, I might make something of it.  No matter what a man
is--I wouldn't give twopence for him"--here Caleb's mouth looked
bitter, and he snapped his fingers--"whether he was the prime minister
or the rick-thatcher, if he didn't do well what he undertook to do."

"I can never feel that I should do that in being a clergyman," said
Fred, meaning to take a step in argument.

"Then let it alone, my boy," said Caleb, abruptly, "else you'll never
be easy.  Or, if you _are_ easy, you'll be a poor stick."

"That is very nearly what Mary thinks about it," said Fred, coloring.
"I think you must know what I feel for Mary, Mr. Garth: I hope it does
not displease you that I have always loved her better than any one
else, and that I shall never love any one as I love her."

The expression of Caleb's face was visibly softening while Fred spoke.
But he swung his head with a solemn slowness, and said--

"That makes things more serious, Fred, if you want to take Mary's
happiness into your keeping."

"I know that, Mr. Garth," said Fred, eagerly, "and I would do anything
for _her_.  She says she will never have me if I go into the Church;
and I shall be the most miserable devil in the world if I lose all hope
of Mary.  Really, if I could get some other profession,
business--anything that I am at all fit for, I would work hard, I would
deserve your good opinion.  I should like to have to do with outdoor
things.  I know a good deal about land and cattle already.  I used to
believe, you know--though you will think me rather foolish for it--that
I should have land of my own.  I am sure knowledge of that sort would
come easily to me, especially if I could be under you in any way."

"Softly, my boy," said Caleb, having the image of "Susan" before his
eyes.  "What have you said to your father about all this?"

"Nothing, yet; but I must tell him.  I am only waiting to know what I
can do instead of entering the Church.  I am very sorry to disappoint
him, but a man ought to be allowed to judge for himself when he is
four-and-twenty. How could I know when I was fifteen, what it would be
right for me to do now?  My education was a mistake."

"But hearken to this, Fred," said Caleb.  "Are you sure Mary is fond of
you, or would ever have you?"

"I asked Mr. Farebrother to talk to her, because she had forbidden
me--I didn't know what else to do," said Fred, apologetically.  "And he
says that I have every reason to hope, if I can put myself in an
honorable position--I mean, out of the Church. I dare say you think it
unwarrantable in me, Mr. Garth, to be troubling you and obtruding my
own wishes about Mary, before I have done anything at all for myself.
Of course I have not the least claim--indeed, I have already a debt to
you which will never be discharged, even when I have been, able to pay
it in the shape of money."

"Yes, my boy, you have a claim," said Caleb, with much feeling in his
voice.  "The young ones have always a claim on the old to help them
forward.  I was young myself once and had to do without much help; but
help would have been welcome to me, if it had been only for the
fellow-feeling's sake.  But I must consider.  Come to me to-morrow at
the office, at nine o'clock. At the office, mind."

Mr. Garth would take no important step without consulting Susan, but it
must be confessed that before he reached home he had taken his
resolution.  With regard to a large number of matters about which other
men are decided or obstinate, he was the most easily manageable man in
the world.  He never knew what meat he would choose, and if Susan had
said that they ought to live in a four-roomed cottage, in order to
save, he would have said, "Let us go," without inquiring into details.
But where Caleb's feeling and judgment strongly pronounced, he was a
ruler; and in spite of his mildness and timidity in reproving, every
one about him knew that on the exceptional occasions when he chose, he
was absolute.  He never, indeed, chose to be absolute except on some
one else's behalf.  On ninety-nine points Mrs. Garth decided, but on
the hundredth she was often aware that she would have to perform the
singularly difficult task of carrying out her own principle, and to
make herself subordinate.

"It is come round as I thought, Susan," said Caleb, when they were
seated alone in the evening.  He had already narrated the adventure
which had brought about Fred's sharing in his work, but had kept back
the further result.  "The children _are_ fond of each other--I mean,
Fred and Mary."

Mrs. Garth laid her work on her knee, and fixed her penetrating eyes
anxiously on her husband.

"After we'd done our work, Fred poured it all out to me.  He can't bear
to be a clergyman, and Mary says she won't have him if he is one; and
the lad would like to be under me and give his mind to business.  And
I've determined to take him and make a man of him."

"Caleb!" said Mrs. Garth, in a deep contralto, expressive of resigned
astonishment.

"It's a fine thing to do," said Mr. Garth, settling himself firmly
against the back of his chair, and grasping the elbows.  "I shall have
trouble with him, but I think I shall carry it through.  The lad loves
Mary, and a true love for a good woman is a great thing, Susan.  It
shapes many a rough fellow."

"Has Mary spoken to you on the subject?" said Mrs Garth, secretly a
little hurt that she had to be informed on it herself.

"Not a word.  I asked her about Fred once; I gave her a bit of a
warning.  But she assured me she would never marry an idle
self-indulgent man--nothing since.  But it seems Fred set on Mr.
Farebrother to talk to her, because she had forbidden him to speak
himself, and Mr. Farebrother has found out that she is fond of Fred,
but says he must not be a clergyman.  Fred's heart is fixed on Mary,
that I can see: it gives me a good opinion of the lad--and we always
liked him, Susan."

"It is a pity for Mary, I think," said Mrs. Garth.

"Why--a pity?"

"Because, Caleb, she might have had a man who is worth twenty Fred
Vincy's."

"Ah?" said Caleb, with surprise.

"I firmly believe that Mr. Farebrother is attached to her, and meant to
make her an offer; but of course, now that Fred has used him as an
envoy, there is an end to that better prospect." There was a severe
precision in Mrs. Garth's utterance.  She was vexed and disappointed,
but she was bent on abstaining from useless words.

Caleb was silent a few moments under a conflict of feelings.  He looked
at the floor and moved his head and hands in accompaniment to some
inward argumentation.  At last he said--

"That would have made me very proud and happy, Susan, and I should have
been glad for your sake.  I've always felt that your belongings have
never been on a level with you.  But you took me, though I was a plain
man."

"I took the best and cleverest man I had ever known," said Mrs. Garth,
convinced that _she_ would never have loved any one who came short of
that mark.

"Well, perhaps others thought you might have done better.  But it would
have been worse for me.  And that is what touches me close about Fred.
The lad is good at bottom, and clever enough to do, if he's put in the
right way; and he loves and honors my daughter beyond anything, and she
has given him a sort of promise according to what he turns out.  I say,
that young man's soul is in my hand; and I'll do the best I can for
him, so help me God!  It's my duty, Susan."

Mrs. Garth was not given to tears, but there was a large one rolling
down her face before her husband had finished.  It came from the
pressure of various feelings, in which there was much affection and
some vexation.  She wiped it away quickly, saying--

"Few men besides you would think it a duty to add to their anxieties in
that way, Caleb."

"That signifies nothing--what other men would think.  I've got a clear
feeling inside me, and that I shall follow; and I hope your heart will
go with me, Susan, in making everything as light as can be to Mary,
poor child."

Caleb, leaning back in his chair, looked with anxious appeal towards
his wife.  She rose and kissed him, saying, "God bless you, Caleb!  Our
children have a good father."

But she went out and had a hearty cry to make up for the suppression of
her words.  She felt sure that her husband's conduct would be
misunderstood, and about Fred she was rational and unhopeful.  Which
would turn out to have the more foresight in it--her rationality or
Caleb's ardent generosity?

When Fred went to the office the next morning, there was a test to be
gone through which he was not prepared for.

"Now Fred," said Caleb, "you will have some desk-work. I have always
done a good deal of writing myself, but I can't do without help, and as
I want you to understand the accounts and get the values into your
head, I mean to do without another clerk.  So you must buckle to.  How
are you at writing and arithmetic?"

Fred felt an awkward movement of the heart; he had not thought of
desk-work; but he was in a resolute mood, and not going to shrink.
"I'm not afraid of arithmetic, Mr. Garth: it always came easily to me.
I think you know my writing."

"Let us see," said Caleb, taking up a pen, examining it carefully and
handing it, well dipped, to Fred with a sheet of ruled paper.  "Copy me
a line or two of that valuation, with the figures at the end."

At that time the opinion existed that it was beneath a gentleman to
write legibly, or with a hand in the least suitable to a clerk.  Fred
wrote the lines demanded in a hand as gentlemanly as that of any
viscount or bishop of the day: the vowels were all alike and the
consonants only distinguishable as turning up or down, the strokes had
a blotted solidity and the letters disdained to keep the line--in
short, it was a manuscript of that venerable kind easy to interpret
when you know beforehand what the writer means.

As Caleb looked on, his visage showed a growing depression, but when
Fred handed him the paper he gave something like a snarl, and rapped
the paper passionately with the back of his hand.  Bad work like this
dispelled all Caleb's mildness.

"The deuce!" he exclaimed, snarlingly.  "To think that this is a
country where a man's education may cost hundreds and hundreds, and it
turns you out this!"  Then in a more pathetic tone, pushing up his
spectacles and looking at the unfortunate scribe, "The Lord have mercy
on us, Fred, I can't put up with this!"

"What can I do, Mr. Garth?" said Fred, whose spirits had sunk very low,
not only at the estimate of his handwriting, but at the vision of
himself as liable to be ranked with office clerks.

"Do?  Why, you must learn to form your letters and keep the line.
What's the use of writing at all if nobody can understand it?" asked
Caleb, energetically, quite preoccupied with the bad quality of the
work.  "Is there so little business in the world that you must be
sending puzzles over the country?  But that's the way people are
brought up.  I should lose no end of time with the letters some people
send me, if Susan did not make them out for me.  It's disgusting." Here
Caleb tossed the paper from him.

Any stranger peeping into the office at that moment might have wondered
what was the drama between the indignant man of business, and the
fine-looking young fellow whose blond complexion was getting rather
patchy as he bit his lip with mortification.  Fred was struggling with
many thoughts.  Mr. Garth had been so kind and encouraging at the
beginning of their interview, that gratitude and hopefulness had been
at a high pitch, and the downfall was proportionate.  He had not
thought of desk-work--in fact, like the majority of young gentlemen, he
wanted an occupation which should be free from disagreeables.  I cannot
tell what might have been the consequences if he had not distinctly
promised himself that he would go to Lowick to see Mary and tell her
that he was engaged to work under her father.  He did not like to
disappoint himself there.

"I am very sorry," were all the words that he could muster.  But Mr.
Garth was already relenting.

"We must make the best of it, Fred," he began, with a return to his
usual quiet tone.  "Every man can learn to write.  I taught myself.  Go
at it with a will, and sit up at night if the day-time isn't enough.
We'll be patient, my boy.  Callum shall go on with the books for a bit,
while you are learning.  But now I must be off," said Caleb, rising.
"You must let your father know our agreement.  You'll save me Callum's
salary, you know, when you can write; and I can afford to give you
eighty pounds for the first year, and more after."

When Fred made the necessary disclosure to his parents, the relative
effect on the two was a surprise which entered very deeply into his
memory.  He went straight from Mr. Garth's office to the warehouse,
rightly feeling that the most respectful way in which he could behave
to his father was to make the painful communication as gravely and
formally as possible.  Moreover, the decision would be more certainly
understood to be final, if the interview took place in his father's
gravest hours, which were always those spent in his private room at the
warehouse.

Fred entered on the subject directly, and declared briefly what he had
done and was resolved to do, expressing at the end his regret that he
should be the cause of disappointment to his father, and taking the
blame on his own deficiencies.  The regret was genuine, and inspired
Fred with strong, simple words.

Mr. Vincy listened in profound surprise without uttering even an
exclamation, a silence which in his impatient temperament was a sign of
unusual emotion.  He had not been in good spirits about trade that
morning, and the slight bitterness in his lips grew intense as he
listened.  When Fred had ended, there was a pause of nearly a minute,
during which Mr. Vincy replaced a book in his desk and turned the key
emphatically.  Then he looked at his son steadily, and said--

"So you've made up your mind at last, sir?"

"Yes, father."

"Very well; stick to it.  I've no more to say.  You've thrown away your
education, and gone down a step in life, when I had given you the means
of rising, that's all."

"I am very sorry that we differ, father.  I think I can be quite as
much of a gentleman at the work I have undertaken, as if I had been a
curate.  But I am grateful to you for wishing to do the best for me."

"Very well; I have no more to say.  I wash my hands of you.  I only
hope, when you have a son of your own he will make a better return for
the pains you spend on him."

This was very cutting to Fred.  His father was using that unfair
advantage possessed by us all when we are in a pathetic situation and
see our own past as if it were simply part of the pathos.  In reality,
Mr. Vincy's wishes about his son had had a great deal of pride,
inconsiderateness, and egoistic folly in them.  But still the
disappointed father held a strong lever; and Fred felt as if he were
being banished with a malediction.

"I hope you will not object to my remaining at home, sir?" he said,
after rising to go; "I shall have a sufficient salary to pay for my
board, as of course I should wish to do."

"Board be hanged!" said Mr. Vincy, recovering himself in his disgust at
the notion that Fred's keep would be missed at his table.  "Of course
your mother will want you to stay.  But I shall keep no horse for you,
you understand; and you will pay your own tailor.  You will do with a
suit or two less, I fancy, when you have to pay for 'em."

Fred lingered; there was still something to be said.  At last it came.

"I hope you will shake hands with me, father, and forgive me the
vexation I have caused you."

Mr. Vincy from his chair threw a quick glance upward at his son, who
had advanced near to him, and then gave his hand, saying hurriedly,
"Yes, yes, let us say no more."

Fred went through much more narrative and explanation with his mother,
but she was inconsolable, having before her eyes what perhaps her
husband had never thought of, the certainty that Fred would marry Mary
Garth, that her life would henceforth be spoiled by a perpetual
infusion of Garths and their ways, and that her darling boy, with his
beautiful face and stylish air "beyond anybody else's son in
Middlemarch," would be sure to get like that family in plainness of
appearance and carelessness about his clothes.  To her it seemed that
there was a Garth conspiracy to get possession of the desirable Fred,
but she dared not enlarge on this opinion, because a slight hint of it
had made him "fly out" at her as he had never done before.  Her temper
was too sweet for her to show any anger, but she felt that her
happiness had received a bruise, and for several days merely to look at
Fred made her cry a little as if he were the subject of some baleful
prophecy.  Perhaps she was the slower to recover her usual cheerfulness
because Fred had warned her that she must not reopen the sore question
with his father, who had accepted his decision and forgiven him.  If
her husband had been vehement against Fred, she would have been urged
into defence of her darling.  It was the end of the fourth day when Mr.
Vincy said to her--

"Come, Lucy, my dear, don't be so down-hearted. You always have spoiled
the boy, and you must go on spoiling him."

"Nothing ever did cut me so before, Vincy," said the wife, her fair
throat and chin beginning to tremble again, "only his illness."

"Pooh, pooh, never mind!  We must expect to have trouble with our
children.  Don't make it worse by letting me see you out of spirits."

"Well, I won't," said Mrs. Vincy, roused by this appeal and adjusting
herself with a little shake as of a bird which lays down its ruffled
plumage.

"It won't do to begin making a fuss about one," said Mr. Vincy, wishing
to combine a little grumbling with domestic cheerfulness.  "There's
Rosamond as well as Fred."

"Yes, poor thing.  I'm sure I felt for her being disappointed of her
baby; but she got over it nicely."

"Baby, pooh!  I can see Lydgate is making a mess of his practice, and
getting into debt too, by what I hear.  I shall have Rosamond coming to
me with a pretty tale one of these days.  But they'll get no money from
me, I know.  Let _his_ family help him.  I never did like that
marriage.  But it's no use talking.  Ring the bell for lemons, and
don't look dull any more, Lucy.  I'll drive you and Louisa to Riverston
to-morrow."



    They numbered scarce eight summers when a name
        Rose on their souls and stirred such motions there
    As thrill the buds and shape their hidden frame
        At penetration of the quickening air:
    His name who told of loyal Evan Dhu,
        Of quaint Bradwardine, and Vich Ian Vor,
    Making the little world their childhood knew
        Large with a land of mountain lake and scaur,
    And larger yet with wonder love belief
        Toward Walter Scott who living far away
    Sent them this wealth of joy and noble grief.
        The book and they must part, but day by day,
            In lines that thwart like portly spiders ran
            They wrote the tale, from Tully Veolan.


The evening that Fred Vincy walked to Lowick parsonage (he had begun to
see that this was a world in which even a spirited young man must
sometimes walk for want of a horse to carry him) he set out at five
o'clock and called on Mrs. Garth by the way, wishing to assure himself
that she accepted their new relations willingly.

He found the family group, dogs and cats included, under the great
apple-tree in the orchard.  It was a festival with Mrs. Garth, for her
eldest son, Christy, her peculiar joy and pride, had come home for a
short holiday--Christy, who held it the most desirable thing in the
world to be a tutor, to study all literatures and be a regenerate
Porson, and who was an incorporate criticism on poor Fred, a sort of
object-lesson given to him by the educational mother.  Christy himself,
a square-browed, broad-shouldered masculine edition of his mother not
much higher than Fred's shoulder--which made it the harder that he
should be held superior--was always as simple as possible, and thought
no more of Fred's disinclination to scholarship than of a giraffe's,
wishing that he himself were more of the same height.  He was lying on
the ground now by his mother's chair, with his straw hat laid flat over
his eyes, while Jim on the other side was reading aloud from that
beloved writer who has made a chief part in the happiness of many young
lives.  The volume was "Ivanhoe," and Jim was in the great archery
scene at the tournament, but suffered much interruption from Ben, who
had fetched his own old bow and arrows, and was making himself
dreadfully disagreeable, Letty thought, by begging all present to
observe his random shots, which no one wished to do except Brownie, the
active-minded but probably shallow mongrel, while the grizzled
Newfoundland lying in the sun looked on with the dull-eyed neutrality
of extreme old age.  Letty herself, showing as to her mouth and
pinafore some slight signs that she had been assisting at the gathering
of the cherries which stood in a coral-heap on the tea-table, was now
seated on the grass, listening open-eyed to the reading.

But the centre of interest was changed for all by the arrival of Fred
Vincy.  When, seating himself on a garden-stool, he said that he was on
his way to Lowick Parsonage, Ben, who had thrown down his bow, and
snatched up a reluctant half-grown kitten instead, strode across Fred's
outstretched leg, and said "Take me!"

"Oh, and me too," said Letty.

"You can't keep up with Fred and me," said Ben.

"Yes, I can.  Mother, please say that I am to go," urged Letty, whose
life was much checkered by resistance to her depreciation as a girl.

"I shall stay with Christy," observed Jim; as much as to say that he
had the advantage of those simpletons; whereupon Letty put her hand up
to her head and looked with jealous indecision from the one to the
other.

"Let us all go and see Mary," said Christy, opening his arms.

"No, my dear child, we must not go in a swarm to the parsonage.  And
that old Glasgow suit of yours would never do.  Besides, your father
will come home.  We must let Fred go alone.  He can tell Mary that you
are here, and she will come back to-morrow."

Christy glanced at his own threadbare knees, and then at Fred's
beautiful white trousers.  Certainly Fred's tailoring suggested the
advantages of an English university, and he had a graceful way even of
looking warm and of pushing his hair back with his handkerchief.

"Children, run away," said Mrs. Garth; "it is too warm to hang about
your friends.  Take your brother and show him the rabbits."

The eldest understood, and led off the children immediately.  Fred felt
that Mrs. Garth wished to give him an opportunity of saying anything he
had to say, but he could only begin by observing--

"How glad you must be to have Christy here!"

"Yes; he has come sooner than I expected.  He got down from the coach
at nine o'clock, just after his father went out.  I am longing for
Caleb to come and hear what wonderful progress Christy is making.  He
has paid his expenses for the last year by giving lessons, carrying on
hard study at the same time.  He hopes soon to get a private tutorship
and go abroad."

"He is a great fellow," said Fred, to whom these cheerful truths had a
medicinal taste, "and no trouble to anybody." After a slight pause, he
added, "But I fear you will think that I am going to be a great deal of
trouble to Mr. Garth."

"Caleb likes taking trouble: he is one of those men who always do more
than any one would have thought of asking them to do," answered Mrs.
Garth.  She was knitting, and could either look at Fred or not, as she
chose--always an advantage when one is bent on loading speech with
salutary meaning; and though Mrs. Garth intended to be duly reserved,
she did wish to say something that Fred might be the better for.

"I know you think me very undeserving, Mrs. Garth, and with good
reason," said Fred, his spirit rising a little at the perception of
something like a disposition to lecture him.  "I happen to have behaved
just the worst to the people I can't help wishing for the most from.
But while two men like Mr. Garth and Mr. Farebrother have not given me
up, I don't see why I should give myself up."  Fred thought it might be
well to suggest these masculine examples to Mrs. Garth.

"Assuredly," said she, with gathering emphasis.  "A young man for whom
two such elders had devoted themselves would indeed be culpable if he
threw himself away and made their sacrifices vain."

Fred wondered a little at this strong language, but only said, "I hope
it will not be so with me, Mrs. Garth, since I have some encouragement
to believe that I may win Mary.  Mr. Garth has told you about that?
You were not surprised, I dare say?"  Fred ended, innocently referring
only to his own love as probably evident enough.

"Not surprised that Mary has given you encouragement?" returned Mrs.
Garth, who thought it would be well for Fred to be more alive to the
fact that Mary's friends could not possibly have wished this
beforehand, whatever the Vincys might suppose.  "Yes, I confess I was
surprised."

"She never did give me any--not the least in the world, when I talked
to her myself," said Fred, eager to vindicate Mary.  "But when I asked
Mr. Farebrother to speak for me, she allowed him to tell me there was a
hope."

The power of admonition which had begun to stir in Mrs. Garth had not
yet discharged itself.  It was a little too provoking even for _her_
self-control that this blooming youngster should flourish on the
disappointments of sadder and wiser people--making a meal of a
nightingale and never knowing it--and that all the while his family
should suppose that hers was in eager need of this sprig; and her
vexation had fermented the more actively because of its total
repression towards her husband.  Exemplary wives will sometimes find
scapegoats in this way.  She now said with energetic decision, "You
made a great mistake, Fred, in asking Mr. Farebrother to speak for you."

"Did I?" said Fred, reddening instantaneously.  He was alarmed, but at
a loss to know what Mrs. Garth meant, and added, in an apologetic tone,
"Mr. Farebrother has always been such a friend of ours; and Mary, I
knew, would listen to him gravely; and he took it on himself quite
readily."

"Yes, young people are usually blind to everything but their own
wishes, and seldom imagine how much those wishes cost others," said
Mrs. Garth. She did not mean to go beyond this salutary general
doctrine, and threw her indignation into a needless unwinding of her
worsted, knitting her brow at it with a grand air.

"I cannot conceive how it could be any pain to Mr. Farebrother," said
Fred, who nevertheless felt that surprising conceptions were beginning
to form themselves.

"Precisely; you cannot conceive," said Mrs. Garth, cutting her words as
neatly as possible.

For a moment Fred looked at the horizon with a dismayed anxiety, and
then turning with a quick movement said almost sharply--

"Do you mean to say, Mrs. Garth, that Mr. Farebrother is in love with
Mary?"

"And if it were so, Fred, I think you are the last person who ought to
be surprised," returned Mrs. Garth, laying her knitting down beside her
and folding her arms.  It was an unwonted sign of emotion in her that
she should put her work out of her hands.  In fact her feelings were
divided between the satisfaction of giving Fred his discipline and the
sense of having gone a little too far.  Fred took his hat and stick and
rose quickly.

"Then you think I am standing in his way, and in Mary's too?" he said,
in a tone which seemed to demand an answer.

Mrs. Garth could not speak immediately.  She had brought herself into
the unpleasant position of being called on to say what she really felt,
yet what she knew there were strong reasons for concealing.  And to her
the consciousness of having exceeded in words was peculiarly
mortifying.  Besides, Fred had given out unexpected electricity, and he
now added, "Mr. Garth seemed pleased that Mary should be attached to
me.  He could not have known anything of this."

Mrs. Garth felt a severe twinge at this mention of her husband, the
fear that Caleb might think her in the wrong not being easily
endurable.  She answered, wanting to check unintended consequences--

"I spoke from inference only.  I am not aware that Mary knows anything
of the matter."

But she hesitated to beg that he would keep entire silence on a subject
which she had herself unnecessarily mentioned, not being used to stoop
in that way; and while she was hesitating there was already a rush of
unintended consequences under the apple-tree where the tea-things
stood.  Ben, bouncing across the grass with Brownie at his heels, and
seeing the kitten dragging the knitting by a lengthening line of wool,
shouted and clapped his hands; Brownie barked, the kitten, desperate,
jumped on the tea-table and upset the milk, then jumped down again and
swept half the cherries with it; and Ben, snatching up the half-knitted
sock-top, fitted it over the kitten's head as a new source of madness,
while Letty arriving cried out to her mother against this cruelty--it
was a history as full of sensation as "This is the house that Jack
built." Mrs. Garth was obliged to interfere, the other young ones came
up and the tete-a-tete with Fred was ended.  He got away as soon as he
could, and Mrs. Garth could only imply some retractation of her
severity by saying "God bless you" when she shook hands with him.

She was unpleasantly conscious that she had been on the verge of
speaking as "one of the foolish women speaketh"--telling first and
entreating silence after.  But she had not entreated silence, and to
prevent Caleb's blame she determined to blame herself and confess all
to him that very night.  It was curious what an awful tribunal the mild
Caleb's was to her, whenever he set it up.  But she meant to point out
to him that the revelation might do Fred Vincy a great deal of good.

No doubt it was having a strong effect on him as he walked to Lowick.
Fred's light hopeful nature had perhaps never had so much of a bruise
as from this suggestion that if he had been out of the way Mary might
have made a thoroughly good match.  Also he was piqued that he had been
what he called such a stupid lout as to ask that intervention from Mr.
Farebrother.  But it was not in a lover's nature--it was not in
Fred's, that the new anxiety raised about Mary's feeling should not
surmount every other.  Notwithstanding his trust in Mr. Farebrother's
generosity, notwithstanding what Mary had said to him, Fred could not
help feeling that he had a rival: it was a new consciousness, and he
objected to it extremely, not being in the least ready to give up Mary
for her good, being ready rather to fight for her with any man
whatsoever.  But the fighting with Mr. Farebrother must be of a
metaphorical kind, which was much more difficult to Fred than the
muscular.  Certainly this experience was a discipline for Fred hardly
less sharp than his disappointment about his uncle's will.  The iron
had not entered into his soul, but he had begun to imagine what the
sharp edge would be.  It did not once occur to Fred that Mrs. Garth
might be mistaken about Mr. Farebrother, but he suspected that she
might be wrong about Mary.  Mary had been staying at the parsonage
lately, and her mother might know very little of what had been passing
in her mind.

He did not feel easier when he found her looking cheerful with the
three ladies in the drawing-room. They were in animated discussion on
some subject which was dropped when he entered, and Mary was copying
the labels from a heap of shallow cabinet drawers, in a minute
handwriting which she was skilled in.  Mr. Farebrother was somewhere in
the village, and the three ladies knew nothing of Fred's peculiar
relation to Mary: it was impossible for either of them to propose that
they should walk round the garden, and Fred predicted to himself that
he should have to go away without saying a word to her in private.  He
told her first of Christy's arrival and then of his own engagement with
her father; and he was comforted by seeing that this latter news
touched her keenly.  She said hurriedly, "I am so glad," and then bent
over her writing to hinder any one from noticing her face.  But here
was a subject which Mrs. Farebrother could not let pass.

"You don't mean, my dear Miss Garth, that you are glad to hear of a
young man giving up the Church for which he was educated: you only mean
that things being so, you are glad that he should be under an excellent
man like your father."

"No, really, Mrs. Farebrother, I am glad of both, I fear," said Mary,
cleverly getting rid of one rebellious tear.  "I have a dreadfully
secular mind.  I never liked any clergyman except the Vicar of
Wakefield and Mr. Farebrother."

"Now why, my dear?" said Mrs. Farebrother, pausing on her large wooden
knitting-needles and looking at Mary.  "You have always a good reason
for your opinions, but this astonishes me.  Of course I put out of the
question those who preach new doctrine.  But why should you dislike
clergymen?"

"Oh dear," said Mary, her face breaking into merriment as she seemed to
consider a moment, "I don't like their neckcloths."

"Why, you don't like Camden's, then," said Miss Winifred, in some
anxiety.

"Yes, I do," said Mary.  "I don't like the other clergymen's
neckcloths, because it is they who wear them."

"How very puzzling!" said Miss Noble, feeling that her own intellect
was probably deficient.

"My dear, you are joking.  You would have better reasons than these for
slighting so respectable a class of men," said Mrs. Farebrother,
majestically.

"Miss Garth has such severe notions of what people should be that it is
difficult to satisfy her," said Fred.

"Well, I am glad at least that she makes an exception in favor of my
son," said the old lady.

Mary was wondering at Fred's piqued tone, when Mr. Farebrother came in
and had to hear the news about the engagement under Mr. Garth.  At the
end he said with quiet satisfaction, "_That_ is right;" and then bent
to look at Mary's labels and praise her handwriting.  Fred felt
horribly jealous--was glad, of course, that Mr. Farebrother was so
estimable, but wished that he had been ugly and fat as men at forty
sometimes are.  It was clear what the end would be, since Mary openly
placed Farebrother above everybody, and these women were all evidently
encouraging the affair.  He was feeling sure that he should have no
chance of speaking to Mary, when Mr. Farebrother said--

"Fred, help me to carry these drawers back into my study--you have
never seen my fine new study.  Pray come too, Miss Garth.  I want you
to see a stupendous spider I found this morning."

Mary at once saw the Vicar's intention.  He had never since the
memorable evening deviated from his old pastoral kindness towards her,
and her momentary wonder and doubt had quite gone to sleep.  Mary was
accustomed to think rather rigorously of what was probable, and if a
belief flattered her vanity she felt warned to dismiss it as
ridiculous, having early had much exercise in such dismissals.  It was
as she had foreseen: when Fred had been asked to admire the fittings of
the study, and she had been asked to admire the spider, Mr. Farebrother
said--

"Wait here a minute or two.  I am going to look out an engraving which
Fred is tall enough to hang for me.  I shall be back in a few minutes."
And then he went out.  Nevertheless, the first word Fred said to Mary
was--

"It is of no use, whatever I do, Mary.  You are sure to marry
Farebrother at last."  There was some rage in his tone.

"What do you mean, Fred?"  Mary exclaimed indignantly, blushing deeply,
and surprised out of all her readiness in reply.

"It is impossible that you should not see it all clearly enough--you
who see everything."

"I only see that you are behaving very ill, Fred, in speaking so of Mr.
Farebrother after he has pleaded your cause in every way.  How can you
have taken up such an idea?"

Fred was rather deep, in spite of his irritation.  If Mary had really
been unsuspicious, there was no good in telling her what Mrs. Garth had
said.

"It follows as a matter of course," he replied.  "When you are
continually seeing a man who beats me in everything, and whom you set
up above everybody, I can have no fair chance."

"You are very ungrateful, Fred," said Mary.  "I wish I had never told
Mr. Farebrother that I cared for you in the least."

"No, I am not ungrateful; I should be the happiest fellow in the world
if it were not for this.  I told your father everything, and he was
very kind; he treated me as if I were his son.  I could go at the work
with a will, writing and everything, if it were not for this."

"For this? for what?" said Mary, imagining now that something specific
must have been said or done.

"This dreadful certainty that I shall be bowled out by Farebrother."
Mary was appeased by her inclination to laugh.

"Fred," she said, peeping round to catch his eyes, which were sulkily
turned away from her, "you are too delightfully ridiculous.  If you
were not such a charming simpleton, what a temptation this would be to
play the wicked coquette, and let you suppose that somebody besides you
has made love to me."

"Do you really like me best, Mary?" said Fred, turning eyes full of
affection on her, and trying to take her hand.

"I don't like you at all at this moment," said Mary, retreating, and
putting her hands behind her.  "I only said that no mortal ever made
love to me besides you.  And that is no argument that a very wise man
ever will," she ended, merrily.

"I wish you would tell me that you could not possibly ever think of
him," said Fred.

"Never dare to mention this any more to me, Fred," said Mary, getting
serious again.  "I don't know whether it is more stupid or ungenerous
in you not to see that Mr. Farebrother has left us together on purpose
that we might speak freely.  I am disappointed that you should be so
blind to his delicate feeling."

There was no time to say any more before Mr. Farebrother came back with
the engraving; and Fred had to return to the drawing-room still with a
jealous dread in his heart, but yet with comforting arguments from
Mary's words and manner.  The result of the conversation was on the
whole more painful to Mary: inevitably her attention had taken a new
attitude, and she saw the possibility of new interpretations.  She was
in a position in which she seemed to herself to be slighting Mr.
Farebrother, and this, in relation to a man who is much honored, is
always dangerous to the firmness of a grateful woman.  To have a reason
for going home the next day was a relief, for Mary earnestly desired to
be always clear that she loved Fred best.  When a tender affection has
been storing itself in us through many of our years, the idea that we
could accept any exchange for it seems to be a cheapening of our lives.
And we can set a watch over our affections and our constancy as we can
over other treasures.

"Fred has lost all his other expectations; he must keep this," Mary
said to herself, with a smile curling her lips.  It was impossible to
help fleeting visions of another kind--new dignities and an
acknowledged value of which she had often felt the absence.  But these
things with Fred outside them, Fred forsaken and looking sad for the
want of her, could never tempt her deliberate thought.

 The railroad has come to Middlemarch. Many are frightened by this sign of progress. One farmworker says the railroad will only leave the poor farther behind: "This is the big folks's world, this is." Garth surveys the property where it will go through and finds the local people attacking the railroad agents. He and his assistant, Tom, with the help of Fred Vincy on horseback, drive off the attackers. Fred tells Caleb Garth that he and Mary love each other but that Mary will not marry him if he enters the church because she knows he doesn't want that. He asks to be Caleb's assistant. Caleb decides to take him on and make a man of him. He explains to his dubious wife that it is the duty of the elders to teach the young. Mrs. Garth tells Fred that Farebrother also loves Mary, and this is a shock to him, that his rival is the friend who pleaded his suit to her. Meanwhile, the Vincys are disappointed in having spent the money to educate Fred only to see him step down socially by working for Garth. Vincy is further upset by his son-in-law, Lydgate, whom he knows to be deeply in debt.

