“Yes—­well—­you have got a good start; you are in the right profession, the work you feel yourself most fit for.  Some people miss that, and repent too late.  But you must not be too sure of keeping your independence.”

“You mean of family ties?” said Lydgate, conceiving that these might press rather tightly on Mr. Farebrother.

“Not altogether.  Of course they make many things more difficult.  But a good wife—­a good unworldly woman—­may really help a man, and keep him more independent.  There’s a parishioner of mine—­ a fine fellow, but who would hardly have pulled through as he has done without his wife.  Do you know the Garths?  I think they were not Peacock’s patients.”

“No; but there is a Miss Garth at old Featherstone’s, at Lowick.”

“Their daughter:  an excellent girl.”

“She is very quiet—­I have hardly noticed her.”

“She has taken notice of you, though, depend upon it.”

“I don’t understand,” said Lydgate; he could hardly say “Of course.”

“Oh, she gauges everybody.  I prepared her for confirmation—­ she is a favorite of mine.”

Mr. Farebrother puffed a few moments in silence, Lydgate not caring to know more about the Garths.  At last the Vicar laid down his pipe, stretched out his legs, and turned his bright eyes with a smile towards Lydgate, saying—­

“But we Middlemarchers are not so tame as you take us to be.  We have our intrigues and our parties.  I am a party man, for example, and Bulstrode is another.  If you vote for me you will offend Bulstrode.”

“What is there against Bulstrode?” said Lydgate, emphatically.

“I did not say there was anything against him except that.  If you vote against him you will make him your enemy.”

“I don’t know that I need mind about that,” said Lydgate, rather proudly; “but he seems to have good ideas about hospitals, and he spends large sums on useful public objects.  He might help me a good deal in carrying out my ideas.  As to his religious notions—­ why, as Voltaire said, incantations will destroy a flock of sheep if administered with a certain quantity of arsenic.  I look for the man who will bring the arsenic, and don’t mind about his incantations.”

“Very good.  But then you must not offend your arsenic-man.  You will not offend me, you know,” said Mr. Farebrother, quite unaffectedly.  “I don’t translate my own convenience into other people’s duties.  I am opposed to Bulstrode in many ways.  I don’t like the set he belongs to:  they are a narrow ignorant set, and do more to make their neighbors uncomfortable than to make them better.  Their system is a sort of worldly-spiritual cliqueism:  they really look on the rest of mankind as a doomed carcass which is to nourish them for heaven.  But,” he added, smilingly, “I don’t say that Bulstrode’s new hospital is a bad thing; and as to his wanting to oust me from the old one—­why, if he thinks me a mischievous fellow, he is only returning a compliment.  And I am not a model clergyman—­ only a decent makeshift.”