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 “I don’t pretend to say that Farebrother is apostolic,” said Lydgate. “His position is not quite like that of the Apostles: he is only a parson among parishioners whose lives he has to try and make better. Practically I find that what is called being apostolic now, is an impatience of everything in which the parson doesn’t cut the principal figure. I see something of that in Mr Tyke at the Hospital: a good deal of his doctrine is a sort of pinching hard to make people uncomfortably aware of him. Besides, an apostolic man at Lowick!—he ought to think, as St Francis did, that it is needful to preach to the birds.”

“True,” said Dorothea. “It is hard to imagine what sort of notions our farmers and labourers get from their teaching. I have been looking into a volume of sermons by Mr Tyke: such sermons would be of no use at Lowick—I mean, about imputed righteousness and the prophecies in the Apocalypse. I have always been thinking of the different ways in which Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a wider blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truest—I mean that which takes in the most good of all kinds, and brings in the most people as sharers in it. It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much. But I should like to see Mr Farebrother and hear him preach.”

“Do,” said Lydgate; “I trust to the effect of that. He is very much beloved, but he has his enemies too: there are always people who can’t forgive an able man for differing from them. And that money-winning business is really a blot. You don’t, of course, see many Middlemarch people: but Mr Ladislaw, who is constantly seeing Mr Brooke, is a great friend of Mr Farebrother’s old ladies, and would be glad to sing the Vicar’s praises. One of the old ladies—Miss Noble, the aunt—is a wonderfully quaint picture of self-forgetful goodness, and Ladislaw gallants her about sometimes. I met them one day in a back street: you know Ladislaw’s look—a sort of Daphnis in coat and waistcoat; and this little old maid reaching up to his arm—they looked like a couple dropped out of a romantic comedy. But the best evidence about Farebrother is to see him and hear him.”

Happily Dorothea was in her private sitting-room when this conversation occurred, and there was no one present to make Lydgate’s innocent introduction of Ladislaw painful to her. As was usual with him in matters of personal gossip, Lydgate had quite forgotten Rosamond’s remark that she thought Will adored Mrs Casaubon. At that moment he was only caring for what would recommend the Farebrother family; and he had purposely given emphasis to the worst that could be said about the Vicar, in order to forestall objections. In the weeks since Mr Casaubon’s death he had hardly seen Ladislaw, and he had heard no rumour to warn him that Mr Brooke’s confidential secretary was a dangerous subject with Mrs Casaubon. When he was gone, his picture of Ladislaw lingered in her mind and disputed the ground with that question of the Lowick living. What was Will Ladislaw thinking about her? Would he hear of that fact