“If you mean to hinder everybody from having money but saints and evangelists, you must give up some profitable partnerships, that’s all I can say,” Mr. Vincy burst out very bluntly.  “It may be for the glory of God, but it is not for the glory of the Middlemarch trade, that Plymdale’s house uses those blue and green dyes it gets from the Brassing manufactory; they rot the silk, that’s all I know about it.  Perhaps if other people knew so much of the profit went to the glory of God, they might like it better.  But I don’t mind so much about that—­I could get up a pretty row, if I chose.”

Mr. Bulstrode paused a little before he answered.  “You pain me very much by speaking in this way, Vincy.  I do not expect you to understand my grounds of action—­it is not an easy thing even to thread a path for principles in the intricacies of the world—­ still less to make the thread clear for the careless and the scoffing.  You must remember, if you please, that I stretch my tolerance towards you as my wife’s brother, and that it little becomes you to complain of me as withholding material help towards the worldly position of your family.  I must remind you that it is not your own prudence or judgment that has enabled you to keep your place in the trade.”

“Very likely not; but you have been no loser by my trade yet,” said Mr. Vincy, thoroughly nettled (a result which was seldom much retarded by previous resolutions).  “And when you married Harriet, I don’t see how you could expect that our families should not hang by the same nail.  If you’ve changed your mind, and want my family to come down in the world, you’d better say so.  I’ve never changed; I’m a plain Churchman now, just as I used to be before doctrines came up.  I take the world as I find it, in trade and everything else.  I’m contented to be no worse than my neighbors.  But if you want us to come down in the world, say so.  I shall know better what to do then.”

“You talk unreasonably.  Shall you come down in the world for want of this letter about your son?”

“Well, whether or not, I consider it very unhandsome of you to refuse it.  Such doings may be lined with religion, but outside they have a nasty, dog-in-the-manger look.  You might as well slander Fred:  it comes pretty near to it when you refuse to say you didn’t set a slander going.  It’s this sort of thing—–­this tyrannical spirit, wanting to play bishop and banker everywhere—­it’s this sort of thing makes a man’s name stink.”

“Vincy, if you insist on quarrelling with me, it will be exceedingly painful to Harriet as well as myself,” said Mr. Bulstrode, with a trifle more eagerness and paleness than usual.