"We don't want everybody," said Miss Winifred. "But _you_ would like
Miss Garth, mother, shouldn't you?"
"My son's choice shall be mine," said Mrs. Farebrother, with majestic
discretion, "and a wife would be most welcome, Camden. You will want
your whist at home when we go to Lowick, and Henrietta Noble never was
a whist-player." (Mrs. Farebrother always called her tiny old sister by
that magnificent name.)
"I shall do without whist now, mother."
"Why so, Camden? In my time whist was thought an undeniable amusement
for a good churchman," said Mrs. Farebrother, innocent of the meaning
that whist had for her son, and speaking rather sharply, as at some
dangerous countenancing of new doctrine.
"I shall be too busy for whist; I shall have two parishes," said the
Vicar, preferring not to discuss the virtues of that game.
He had already said to Dorothea, "I don't feel bound to give up St.
Botolph's. It is protest enough against the pluralism they want to
reform if I give somebody else most of the money. The stronger thing
is not to give up power, but to use it well."
"I have thought of that," said Dorothea. "So far as self is concerned,
I think it would be easier to give up power and money than to keep
them. It seems very unfitting that I should have this patronage, yet I
felt that I ought not to let it be used by some one else instead of me."
"It is I who am bound to act so that you will not regret your power,"
said Mr. Farebrother.
His was one of the natures in which conscience gets the more active
when the yoke of life ceases to gall them. He made no display of
humility on the subject, but in his heart he felt rather ashamed that
his conduct had shown laches which others who did not get benefices
were free from.
"I used often to wish I had been something else than a clergyman," he
said to Lydgate, "but perhaps it will be better to try and make as good
a clergyman out of myself as I can. That is the well-beneficed point
of view, you perceive, from which difficulties are much simplified," he
ended, smiling.
The Vicar did feel then as if his share of duties would be easy. But
Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly--something like a heavy
friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg
within our gates.
Hardly a week later, Duty presented itself in his study under the
disguise of Fred Vincy, now returned from Omnibus College with his
bachelor's degree.