"I hope you will not object to my remaining at home, sir?" he said,
after rising to go; "I shall have a sufficient salary to pay for my
board, as of course I should wish to do."
"Board be hanged!" said Mr. Vincy, recovering himself in his disgust at
the notion that Fred's keep would be missed at his table. "Of course
your mother will want you to stay. But I shall keep no horse for you,
you understand; and you will pay your own tailor. You will do with a
suit or two less, I fancy, when you have to pay for 'em."
Fred lingered; there was still something to be said. At last it came.
"I hope you will shake hands with me, father, and forgive me the
vexation I have caused you."
Mr. Vincy from his chair threw a quick glance upward at his son, who
had advanced near to him, and then gave his hand, saying hurriedly,
"Yes, yes, let us say no more."
Fred went through much more narrative and explanation with his mother,
but she was inconsolable, having before her eyes what perhaps her
husband had never thought of, the certainty that Fred would marry Mary
Garth, that her life would henceforth be spoiled by a perpetual
infusion of Garths and their ways, and that her darling boy, with his
beautiful face and stylish air "beyond anybody else's son in
Middlemarch," would be sure to get like that family in plainness of
appearance and carelessness about his clothes. To her it seemed that
there was a Garth conspiracy to get possession of the desirable Fred,
but she dared not enlarge on this opinion, because a slight hint of it
had made him "fly out" at her as he had never done before. Her temper
was too sweet for her to show any anger, but she felt that her
happiness had received a bruise, and for several days merely to look at
Fred made her cry a little as if he were the subject of some baleful
prophecy. Perhaps she was the slower to recover her usual cheerfulness
because Fred had warned her that she must not reopen the sore question
with his father, who had accepted his decision and forgiven him. If
her husband had been vehement against Fred, she would have been urged
into defence of her darling. It was the end of the fourth day when Mr.
Vincy said to her--
"Come, Lucy, my dear, don't be so down-hearted. You always have spoiled
the boy, and you must go on spoiling him."
"Nothing ever did cut me so before, Vincy," said the wife, her fair
throat and chin beginning to tremble again, "only his illness."