“And I like them blond, with a certain gait, and a swan neck. Between ourselves, the mayor’s daughter is more to my taste than Miss Brooke or Miss Celia either. If I were a marrying man I should choose Miss Vincy before either of
“Well, make up, make up,” said Mr. Standish, jocosely; “you see the middle-aged fellows carry the day.”
Mr. Chichely shook his head with much meaning: he was not going to incur the certainty of being accepted by the woman he would choose.
The Miss Vincy who had the honor of being Mr. Chichely’s ideal was of course not present; for Mr. Brooke, always objecting to go too far, would not have chosen that his nieces should meet the daughter of a Middlemarch manufacturer, unless it were on a public occasion.
The feminine part of the company included none whom Lady Chettam or Mrs. Cadwallader could object to; for Mrs. Renfrew, the colonel’s widow, was not only unexceptionable in point of breeding, but also interesting on the ground of her complaint, which puzzled the doctors, and seemed clearly a case wherein the fullness of professional knowledge might need the supplement of quackery.
Lady Chettam, who attributed her own remarkable health to homemade bitters united with constant medical attendance, entered with much exercise of the imagination into Mrs. Renfrew’s account of symptoms, and into the amazing futility in her case of all strengthening medicines.
“Where can all the strength of those medicines go, my dear?” said the mild but stately dowager, turning to Mrs. Cadwallader reflectively, when Mrs. Renfrew’s attention was called away.
“It strengthens the disease,” said the Rector’s wife, much too wellborn not to be an amateur in medicine. “Everything depends on the