Methodist preacher, you know. And Johnson said, `You may judge
what a hypoCRITE he is.' And upon my word, I thought

Flavell looked very little like `the highest style of man'--
as somebody calls the Christian--Young, the poet Young, I think--

you know Young? Well, now, Flavell in his shabby black gaiters,
pleading that he thought the Lord had sent him and his wife a good dinner,

and he had a right to knock it down, though not a mighty hunter
before the Lord, as Nimrod was--I assure you it was rather comic:

Fielding would have made something of it--or Scott, now--Scott might
have worked it up. But really, when I came to think of it,

I couldn't help liking that the fellow should have a bit of hare
to say grace over. It's all a matter of prejudice--prejudice with

the law on its side, you know--about the stick and the gaiters,
and so on. However, it doesn't do to reason about things; and law

is law. But I got Johnson to be quiet, and I hushed the matter up.
I doubt whether Chettam would not have been more severe, and yet

he comes down on me as if I were the hardest man in the county.
But here we are at Dagley's."

Mr. Brooke got down at a farmyard-gate, and Dorothea drove on.
It is wonderful how much uglier things will look when we only suspect

that we are blamed for them. Even our own persons in the glass
are apt to change their aspect for us after we have heard some frank

remark on their less admirable points; and on the other hand it
is astonishing how pleasantlyconscience takes our encroachments

on those who never complain or have nobody to complain for them.
Dagley's homestead never before looked so dismal to Mr. Brooke as it

did today, with his mind thus sore about the fault-finding of the
"Trumpet," echoed by Sir James.

It is true that an observer, under that softening influence of
the fine arts which makes other people's hardships picturesque,

might have been delighted with this homestead called Freeman's End:
the old house had dormer-windows in the dark red roof, two of

the chimneys were choked with ivy, the large porch was blocked
up with bundles of sticks, and half the windows were closed

with gray worm-eaten shutters about which the jasmine-boughs grew
in wild luxuriance; the mouldering garden wall with hollyhocks

peeping over it was a perfect study of highly mingled subdued color,
and there was an aged goat (kept doubtless on interesting

superstitious grounds) lying against the open back-kitchen door.
The mossy thatch of the cow-shed, the broken gray barn-doors,

the pauper laborers in raggedbreeches who had nearly finished
unloading a wagon of corn into the barn ready for early thrashing;

the scanty dairy of cows being tethered for milking and leaving
one half of the shed in brown emptiness; the very pigs and white

ducks seeming to wander about the uneven neglected yard as if in
low spirits from feeding on a too meagre quality of rinsings,--

all these objects under the quiet light of a sky marbled with high
clouds would have made a sort of picture which we have all paused

over as a "charming bit," touching other sensibilities than those
which are stirred by the depression of the agricultural interest,

with the sad lack of farming capital, as seen constantly in the
newspapers of that time. But these troublesome associations were

just now strongly present to Mr. Brooke, and spoiled the scene
for him. Mr. Dagley himself made a figure in the landscape,

carrying a pitchfork and wearing his milking-hat--a very old beaver
flattened in front. His coat and breeches were the best he had,

and he would not have been wearing them on this weekday occasion
if he had not been to market and returned later than usual,

having given himself the rare treat of dining at the public table
of the Blue Bull. How he came to fall into this extravagance

would perhaps be matter of wonderment to himself on the morrow;
but before dinner something in the state of the country, a slight

pause in the harvest before the Far Dips were cut, the stories about
the new King and the numerous handbills on the walls, had seemed

to warrant a little recklessness. It was a maxim about Middlemarch,
and regarded as self-evident, that good meat should have good drink,

which last Dagley interpreted as plenty of table ale well followed
up by rum-and-water. These liquors have so far truth in them

that they were not false enough to make poor Dagley seem merry:
they only made his discontent less tongue-tied than usual.

He had also taken too much in the shape of muddy political talk,
a stimulant dangerously disturbing to his farming conservatism,

which consisted in holding that whatever is, is bad, and any change
is likely to be worse. He was flushed, and his eyes had a decidedly

quarrelsome stare as he stood still grasping his pitchfork,
while the landlord approached with his easy shuffling walk,

one hand in his trouser-pocket and the other swinging round a thin
walking-stick.

"Dagley, my good fellow," began Mr. Brooke, conscious that he
was going to be very friendly about the boy.

"Oh, ay, I'm a good feller, am I? Thank ye, sir, thank ye,"
said Dagley, with a loud snarling irony which made Fag the sheep-dog

stir from his seat and prick his ears; but seeing Monk enter
the yard after some outside loitering, Fag seated himself again

in an attitude of observation. "I'm glad to hear I'm a good feller."
Mr. Brooke reflected that it was market-day, and that his worthy

tenant had probably been dining, but saw no reason why he should
not go on, since he could take the precaution of repeating what he

had to say to Mrs. Dagley.
"Your little lad Jacob has been caught killing a leveret, Dagley:

I have told Johnson to lock him up in the empty stable an hour
or two, just to frighten him, you know. But he will be brought

home by-and-by, before night: and you'll just look after him,
will you, and give him a reprimand, you know?"

"No, I woon't: I'll be dee'd if I'll leather my boy to please
you or anybody else, not if you was twenty landlords istid o'

one, and that a bad un."
Dagley's words were loud enough to summon his wife to the

back-kitchen door--the only entrance ever used, and one always
open except in bad weather--and Mr. Brooke, saying soothingly,

"Well, well, I'll speak to your wife--I didn't mean beating, you know,"
turned to walk to the house. But Dagley, only the more inclined

to "have his say" with a gentleman who walked away from him,
followed at once, with Fag slouching at his heels and sullenly

evading some small and probably charitable advances on the part of Monk.
"How do you do, Mrs. Dagley?" said Mr. Brooke, making some haste.

"I came to tell you about your boy: I don't want you to give
him the stick, you know." He was careful to speak quite plainly

this time.
Overworked Mrs. Dagley--a thin, worn woman, from whose life

pleasure had so entirely vanished that she had not even any Sunday
clothes which could give her satisfaction in preparing for church--

had already had a misunderstanding with her husband since he
had come home, and was in low spirits, expecting the worst.

But her husband was beforehand in answering.
"No, nor he woon't hev the stick, whether you want it or no,"

pursued Dagley, throwing out his voice, as if he wanted it to hit hard.
"You've got no call to come an' talk about sticks o' these primises,

as you woon't give a stick tow'rt mending. Go to Middlemarch to ax
for YOUR charrickter."

"You'd far better hold your tongue, Dagley," said the wife,
"and not kick your own trough over. When a man as is father

of a family has been an' spent money at market and made himself
the worse for liquor, he's done enough mischief for one day.

But I should like to know what my boy's done, sir."
"Niver do you mind what he's done," said Dagley, more fiercely,

"it's my business to speak, an' not yourn. An' I wull speak, too.
I'll hev my say--supper or no. An' what I say is, as I've lived upo'