“Oblige me!  It will be the best bargain he ever made.  A pair of church pigeons for a couple of wicked Spanish fowls that eat their own eggs!  Don’t you and Fitchett boast too much, that is all!”

The phaeton was driven onwards with the last words, leaving Mrs. Fitchett laughing and shaking her head slowly, with an interjectional “Sure_ly_, sure_ly_!”—­from which it might be inferred that she would have found the country-side somewhat duller if the Rector’s lady had been less free-spoken and less of a skinflint.  Indeed, both the farmers and laborers in the parishes of Freshitt and Tipton would have felt a sad lack of conversation but for the stories about what Mrs. Cadwallader said and did:  a lady of immeasurably high birth, descended, as it were, from unknown earls, dim as the crowd of heroic shades—­who pleaded poverty, pared down prices, and cut jokes in the most companionable manner, though with a turn of tongue that let you know who she was.  Such a lady gave a neighborliness to both rank and religion, and mitigated the bitterness of uncommuted tithe.  A much more exemplary character with an infusion of sour dignity would not have furthered their comprehension of the Thirty-nine Articles, and would have been less socially uniting.

Mr. Brooke, seeing Mrs. Cadwallader’s merits from a different point of view, winced a little when her name was announced in the library, where he was sitting alone.

“I see you have had our Lowick Cicero here,” she said, seating herself comfortably, throwing back her wraps, and showing a thin but well-built figure.  “I suspect you and he are brewing some bad polities, else you would not be seeing so much of the lively man.  I shall inform against you:  remember you are both suspicious characters since you took Peel’s side about the Catholic Bill.  I shall tell everybody that you are going to put up for Middlemarch on the Whig side when old Pinkerton resigns, and that Casaubon is going to help you in an underhand manner:  going to bribe the voters with pamphlets, and throw open the public-houses to distribute them.  Come, confess!”

“Nothing of the sort,” said Mr. Brooke, smiling and rubbing his eye-glasses, but really blushing a little at the impeachment.  “Casaubon and I don’t talk politics much.  He doesn’t care much about the philanthropic side of things; punishments, and that kind of thing.  He only cares about Church questions.  That is not my line of action, you know.”

“Ra-a-ther too much, my friend.  I have heard of your doings.  Who was it that sold his bit of land to the Papists at Middlemarch?  I believe you bought it on purpose.  You are a perfect Guy Faux.  See if you are not burnt in effigy this 5th of November coming.  Humphrey would not come to quarrel with you about it, so I am come.”

“Very good.  I was prepared to be persecuted for not persecuting—­not persecuting, you know.”

“There you go!  That is a piece of clap-trap you have got ready for the hustings.  Now, do not let them lure you to the hustings, my dear Mr. Brooke.  A man always makes a fool of himself, speechifying:  there’s no excuse but being on the right side, so that you can ask a blessing on your humming and hawing.  You will lose yourself, I forewarn you.  You will make a Saturday pie of all parties’ opinions, and be pelted by everybody.”