"Well, you can buy yourself a fine hunter now. Eighty pound is enough
for that, I reckon--and you'll have twenty pound over to get yourself
out of any little scrape," said Mr. Featherstone, chuckling slightly.
"You are very good, sir," said Fred, with a fine sense of contrast
between the words and his feeling.
"Ay, rather a better uncle than your fine uncle Bulstrode. You won't
get much out of his spekilations, I think. He's got a pretty strong
string round your father's leg, by what I hear, eh?"
"My father never tells me anything about his affairs, sir."
"Well, he shows some sense there. But other people find 'em out
without his telling. _He'll_ never have much to leave you: he'll
most-like die without a will--he's the sort of man to do it--let 'em
make him mayor of Middlemarch as much as they like. But you won't get
much by his dying without a will, though you _are_ the eldest son."
Fred thought that Mr. Featherstone had never been so disagreeable
before. True, he had never before given him quite so much money at
once.
"Shall I destroy this letter of Mr. Bulstrode's, sir?" said Fred,
rising with the letter as if he would put it in the fire.
"Ay, ay, I don't want it. It's worth no money to me."
Fred carried the letter to the fire, and thrust the poker through it
with much zest. He longed to get out of the room, but he was a little
ashamed before his inner self, as well as before his uncle, to run away
immediately after pocketing the money. Presently, the farm-bailiff
came up to give his master a report, and Fred, to his unspeakable
relief, was dismissed with the injunction to come again soon.
He had longed not only to be set free from his uncle, but also to find
Mary Garth. She was now in her usual place by the fire, with sewing in
her hands and a book open on the little table by her side. Her eyelids
had lost some of their redness now, and she had her usual air of
self-command.
"Am I wanted up-stairs?" she said, half rising as Fred entered.
"No; I am only dismissed, because Simmons is gone up."
Mary sat down again, and resumed her work. She was certainly treating
him with more indifference than usual: she did not know how
affectionately indignant he had felt on her behalf up-stairs.
"May I stay here a little, Mary, or shall I bore you?"
"Pray sit down," said Mary; "you will not be so heavy a bore as Mr.
John Waule, who was here yesterday, and he sat down without asking my
leave."