than to taking sides, but there was no need for him to be hasty in making any new man acquaintance.  Rosamond silently wished that her father would invite Mr. Lydgate.  She was tired of the faces and figures she had always been used to—­the various irregular profiles and gaits and turns of phrase distinguishing those Middlemarch young men whom she had known as boys.  She had been at school with girls of higher position, whose brothers, she felt sure, it would have been possible for her to be more interested in, than in these inevitable Middlemarch companions.  But she would not have chosen to mention her wish to her father; and he, for his part, was in no hurry on the subject.  An alderman about to be mayor must by-and-by enlarge his dinner-parties, but at present there were plenty of guests at his well-spread table.

That table often remained covered with the relics of the family breakfast long after Mr. Vincy had gone with his second son to the warehouse, and when Miss Morgan was already far on in morning lessons with the younger girls in the schoolroom.  It awaited the family laggard, who found any sort of inconvenience (to others) less disagreeable than getting up when he was called.  This was the case one morning of the October in which we have lately seen Mr. Casaubon visiting the Grange; and though the room was a little overheated with the fire, which had sent the spaniel panting to a remote corner, Rosamond, for some reason, continued to sit at her embroidery longer than usual, now and then giving herself a little shake, and laying her work on her knee to contemplate it with an air of hesitating weariness.  Her mamma, who had returned from an excursion to the kitchen, sat on the other side of the small work-table with an air of more entire placidity, until, the clock again giving notice that it was going to strike, she looked up from the lace-mending which was occupying her plump fingers and rang the bell.

“Knock at Mr. Fred’s door again, Pritchard, and tell him it has struck half-past ten.”

This was said without any change in the radiant good-humor of Mrs. Vincy’s face, in which forty-five years had delved neither angles nor parallels; and pushing back her pink capstrings, she let her work rest on her lap, while she looked admiringly at her daughter.

“Mamma,” said Rosamond, “when Fred comes down I wish you would not let him have red herrings.  I cannot bear the smell of them all over the house at this hour of the morning.”

“Oh, my dear, you are so hard on your brothers!  It is the only fault I have to find with you.  You are the sweetest temper in the world, but you are so tetchy with your brothers.”

“Not tetchy, mamma:  you never hear me speak in an unladylike way.”

“Well, but you want to deny them things.”

“Brothers are so unpleasant.”

“Oh, my dear, you must allow for young men.  Be thankful if they have good hearts.  A woman must learn to put up with little things.  You will be married some day.”