MIDDLEMARCH (Completed)

BOOK 7- TWO TEMPTATIONS- Chapter 63

These little things are great to little man.--GOLDSMITH.

"Have you seen much of your scientific phoenix, Lydgate, lately?"

said Mr. Toller at one of his Christmas dinner-parties, speaking

to Mr. Farebrother on his right hand.

"Not much, I am sorry to say," answered the Vicar, accustomed to parry

Mr. Toller's banter about his belief in the new medical light.

"I am out of the way and he is too busy."

"Is he? I am glad to hear it," said Dr. Minchin, with mingled

suavity and surprise.

"He gives a great deal of time to the New Hospital," said Mr. Farebrother,

who had his reasons for continuing the subject: "I hear of that from

my neighbor, Mrs. Casaubon, who goes there often. She says Lydgate

is indefatigable, and is making a fine thing of Bulstrode's institution.

He is preparing a new ward in case of the cholera coming to us."

"And preparing theories of treatment to try on the patients,

I suppose," said Mr. Toller.

"Come, Toller, be candid," said Mr. Farebrother. "You are too clever

not to see the good of a bold fresh mind in medicine, as well as in

everything else; and as to cholera, I fancy, none of you are very

sure what you ought to do. If a man goes a little too far along

a new road, it is usually himself that he harms more than any one else."

"I am sure you and Wrench ought to be obliged to him," said Dr. Minchin,

looking towards Toller, "for he has sent you the cream of Peacock's

patients."

"Lydgate has been living at a great rate for a young beginner,"

said Mr. Harry Toller, the brewer. "I suppose his relations in the

North back him up."

"I hope so," said Mr. Chichely, "else he ought not to have married

that nice girl we were all so fond of. Hang it, one has a grudge

against a man who carries off the prettiest girl in the town."

"Ay, by God! and the best too," said Mr. Standish.

"My friend Vincy didn't half like the marriage, I know that,"

said Mr. Chichely. "_He_ wouldn't do much. How the relations

on the other side may have come down I can't say." There was an

emphatic kind of reticence in Mr. Chichely's manner of speaking.

"Oh, I shouldn't think Lydgate ever looked to practice for a living,"

said Mr. Toller, with a slight touch of sarcasm, and there the subject

was dropped.

This was not the first time that Mr. Farebrother had heard hints of

Lydgate's expenses being obviously too great to be met by his practice,