“Eh? no,” said Mr. Brooke, dropping his gloves into his hat and hastily adjusting his eyeglass. But Mr. Cadwallader kept the paper in his hand, saying, with a smile in his eyes⁠—

“Look here! all this is about a landlord not a hundred miles from Middlemarch, who receives his own rents. They say he is the most retrogressive man in the county. I think you must have taught them that word in the Pioneer .”

“Oh, that is Keck⁠—an illiterate fellow, you know. Retrogressive, now! Come, that’s capital. He thinks it means destructive: they want to make me out a destructive, you know,” said Mr. Brooke, with that cheerfulness which is usually sustained by an adversary’s ignorance.