"Why so?"

"Why, what can a man do when he takes to adoring one of you mermaids?

He only neglects his work and runs up bills."

"I am sure you do not neglect your work. You are always at the

Hospital, or seeing poor patients, or thinking about some doctor's

quarrel; and then at home you always want to pore over your microscope

and phials. Confess you like those things better than me."

"Haven't you ambition enough to wish that your husband should be

something better than a Middlemarch doctor?" said Lydgate, letting his

hands fall on to his wife's shoulders, and looking at her with

affectionate gravity. "I shall make you learn my favorite bit from an

old poet--

'Why should our pride make such a stir to be

And be forgot? What good is like to this,

To do worthy the writing, and to write

Worthy the reading and the worlds delight?'

What I want, Rosy, is to do worthy the writing,--and to write out

myself what I have done. A man must work, to do that, my pet."

"Of course, I wish you to make discoveries: no one could more wish you

to attain a high position in some better place than Middlemarch. You

cannot say that I have ever tried to hinder you from working. But we

cannot live like hermits. You are not discontented with me, Tertius?"

"No, dear, no. I am too entirely contented."

"But what did Mrs. Casaubon want to say to you?"

"Merely to ask about her husband's health. But I think she is going to

be splendid to our New Hospital: I think she will give us two hundred

a-year."




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