MIDDLEMARCH (Completed)

Chapter 17

"The clerkly person smiled and said

Promise was a pretty maid,

But being poor she died unwed."

The Rev. Camden Farebrother, whom Lydgate went to see the

next evening, lived in an old parsonage, built of stone,

venerable enough to match the church which it looked out upon.

All the furniture too in the house was old, but with another

grade of age--that of Mr. Farebrother's father and grandfather.

There were painted white chairs, with gilding and wreaths on them,

and some lingering red silk damask with slits in it. There were

engraved portraits of Lord Chancellors and other celebrated lawyers

of the last century; and there were old pier-glasses to reflect them,

as well as the little satin-wood tables and the sofas resembling

a prolongation of uneasy chairs, all standing in relief against

the dark wainscot This was the physiognomy of the drawing-room into

which Lydgate was shown; and there were three ladies to receive him,

who were also old-fashioned, and of a faded but genuine respectability:

Mrs. Farebrother, the Vicar's white-haired mother, befrilled and

kerchiefed with dainty cleanliness, up right, quick-eyed, and

still under seventy; Miss Noble, her sister, a tiny old lady

of meeker aspect, with frills and kerchief decidedly more worn

and mended; and Miss Winifred Farebrother, the Vicar's elder sister,

well-looking like himself, but nipped and subdued as single women

are apt to be who spend their lives in uninterrupted subjection

to their elders. Lydgate had not expected to see so quaint a group:

knowing simply that Mr. Farebrother was a bachelor, he had thought

of being ushered into a snuggery where the chief furniture would

probably be books and collections of natural objects. The Vicar

himself seemed to wear rather a changed aspect, as most men do

when acquaintances made elsewhere see them for the first time

in their own homes; some indeed showing like an actor of genial

parts disadvantageously cast for the curmudgeon in a new piece.

This was not the case with Mr. Farebrother: he seemed a trifle milder

and more silent, the chief talker being his mother, while he only put

in a good-humored moderating remark here and there. The old lady

was evidently accustomed to tell her company what they ought to think,

and to regard no subject as quite safe without her steering.

She was afforded leisure for this function by having all her little

wants attended to by Miss Winifred. Meanwhile tiny Miss Noble

carried on her arm a small basket, into which she diverted a bit