With a favor to ask we review our list of friends, do justice to their
more amiable qualities, forgive their little offenses, and concerning
each in turn, try to arrive at the conclusion that he will be eager to
oblige us, our own eagerness to be obliged being as communicable as
other warmth. Still there is always a certain number who are dismissed
as but moderately eager until the others have refused; and it happened
that Fred checked off all his friends but one, on the ground that
applying to them would be disagreeable; being implicitly convinced that
he at least (whatever might be maintained about mankind generally) had
a right to be free from anything disagreeable. That he should ever
fall into a thoroughly unpleasant position--wear trousers shrunk with
washing, eat cold mutton, have to walk for want of a horse, or to "duck
under" in any sort of way--was an absurdity irreconcilable with those
cheerful intuitions implanted in him by nature. And Fred winced under
the idea of being looked down upon as wanting funds for small debts.
Thus it came to pass that the friend whom he chose to apply to was at
once the poorest and the kindest--namely, Caleb Garth.
The Garths were very fond of Fred, as he was of them; for when he and
Rosamond were little ones, and the Garths were better off, the slight
connection between the two families through Mr. Featherstone's double
marriage (the first to Mr. Garth's sister, and the second to Mrs.
Vincy's) had led to an acquaintance which was carried on between the
children rather than the parents: the children drank tea together out
of their toy teacups, and spent whole days together in play. Mary was
a little hoyden, and Fred at six years old thought her the nicest girl
in the world, making her his wife with a brass ring which he had cut
from an umbrella. Through all the stages of his education he had kept
his affection for the Garths, and his habit of going to their house as
a second home, though any intercourse between them and the elders of
his family had long ceased. Even when Caleb Garth was prosperous, the
Vincys were on condescending terms with him and his wife, for there
were nice distinctions of rank in Middlemarch; and though old
manufacturers could not any more than dukes be connected with none but
equals, they were conscious of an inherent social superiority which was
defined with great nicety in practice, though hardly expressible
theoretically. Since then Mr. Garth had failed in the building
business, which he had unfortunately added to his other avocations of
surveyor, valuer, and agent, had conducted that business for a time
entirely for the benefit of his assignees, and had been living
narrowly, exerting himself to the utmost that he might after all pay
twenty shillings in the pound. He had now achieved this, and from all
who did not think it a bad precedent, his honorable exertions had won
him due esteem; but in no part of the world is genteel visiting founded
on esteem, in the absence of suitable furniture and complete
dinner-service. Mrs. Vincy had never been at her ease with Mrs. Garth,
and frequently spoke of her as a woman who had had to work for her
bread--meaning that Mrs. Garth had been a teacher before her marriage;
in which case an intimacy with Lindley Murray and Mangnall's Questions
was something like a draper's discrimination of calico trademarks, or a
courier's acquaintance with foreign countries: no woman who was better
off needed that sort of thing. And since Mary had been keeping Mr.
Featherstone's house, Mrs. Vincy's want of liking for the Garths had
been converted into something more positive, by alarm lest Fred should
engage himself to this plain girl, whose parents "lived in such a small
way." Fred, being aware of this, never spoke at home of his visits to
Mrs. Garth, which had of late become more frequent, the increasing
ardor of his affection for Mary inclining him the more towards those
who belonged to her.