"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 domesticcheerfulness.

"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."

CHAPTER LVII.
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 incorporatecriticism 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 belovedwriter 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