Mr. Bulstrode, alone with his brother-in-law, poured himself out a

glass of water, and opened a sandwich-box.

"I cannot persuade you to adopt my regimen, Vincy?"

"No, no; I've no opinion of that system. Life wants padding," said Mr.

Vincy, unable to omit his portable theory. "However," he went on,

accenting the word, as if to dismiss all irrelevance, "what I came here

to talk about was a little affair of my young scapegrace, Fred's."

"That is a subject on which you and I are likely to take quite as

different views as on diet, Vincy."

"I hope not this time." (Mr. Vincy was resolved to be good-humored.)

"The fact is, it's about a whim of old Featherstone's. Somebody has

been cooking up a story out of spite, and telling it to the old man, to

try to set him against Fred. He's very fond of Fred, and is likely to

do something handsome for him; indeed he has as good as told Fred that

he means to leave him his land, and that makes other people jealous."

"Vincy, I must repeat, that you will not get any concurrence from me as

to the course you have pursued with your eldest son. It was entirely

from worldly vanity that you destined him for the Church: with a family

of three sons and four daughters, you were not warranted in devoting

money to an expensive education which has succeeded in nothing but in

giving him extravagant idle habits. You are now reaping the

consequences."

To point out other people's errors was a duty that Mr. Bulstrode rarely

shrank from, but Mr. Vincy was not equally prepared to be patient.

When a man has the immediate prospect of being mayor, and is ready, in

the interests of commerce, to take up a firm attitude on politics

generally, he has naturally a sense of his importance to the framework

of things which seems to throw questions of private conduct into the

background. And this particular reproof irritated him more than any

other. It was eminently superfluous to him to be told that he was

reaping the consequences. But he felt his neck under Bulstrode's yoke;

and though he usually enjoyed kicking, he was anxious to refrain from

that relief.

"As to that, Bulstrode, it's no use going back. I'm not one of your

pattern men, and I don't pretend to be. I couldn't foresee everything

in the trade; there wasn't a finer business in Middlemarch than ours,

and the lad was clever. My poor brother was in the Church, and would

have done well--had got preferment already, but that stomach fever took

him off: else he might have been a dean by this time. I think I was

justified in what I tried to do for Fred. If you come to religion, it

seems to me a man shouldn't want to carve out his meat to an ounce

beforehand:--one must trust a little to Providence and be generous.

It's a good British feeling to try and raise your family a little: in

my opinion, it's a father's duty to give his sons a fine chance."




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