“Bless you both, my dears, and don’t quarrel,” said Mrs. Vincy, with motherly cordiality. “Come, Fred, tell us all about the new doctor. How is your uncle pleased with him?”
“Pretty well, I think. He asks Lydgate all sorts of questions and then screws up his face while he hears the answers, as if they were pinching his toes. That’s his way. Ah, here comes my grilled bone.”
“But how came you to stay out so late, my dear? You only said you were going to your uncle’s.”
“Oh, I dined at Plymdale’s. We had whist. Lydgate was there too.”
“And what do you think of him? He is very gentlemanly, I suppose. They say he is of excellent family—his relations quite county people.”
“Yes,” said Fred. “There was a Lydgate at John’s who spent no end of money. I find this man is a second cousin of his. But rich men may have very poor devils for second cousins.”
“It always makes a difference, though, to be of good family,” said Rosamond, with a tone of decision which showed that she had thought on this subject.
Rosamond felt that she might have been happier if she had not been the daughter of a Middlemarch manufacturer. She disliked anything which reminded her that her mother’s father had been an innkeeper.
Certainly anyone remembering the fact might think that Mrs. Vincy had the air of a very handsome good-humored landlady, accustomed to the most capricious orders of gentlemen.