her husband’s virtues, she had very early made up her mind to his incapacity of minding his own interests, and had met the consequences cheerfully.  She had been magnanimous enough to renounce all pride in teapots or children’s frilling, and had never poured any pathetic confidences into the ears of her feminine neighbors concerning Mr. Garth’s want of prudence and the sums he might have had if he had been like other men.  Hence these fair neighbors thought her either proud or eccentric, and sometimes spoke of her to their husbands as “your fine Mrs. Garth.”  She was not without her criticism of them in return, being more accurately instructed than most matrons in Middlemarch, and—­where is the blameless woman?—­apt to be a little severe towards her own sex, which in her opinion was framed to be entirely subordinate.  On the other hand, she was disproportionately indulgent towards the failings of men, and was often heard to say that these were natural.  Also, it must be admitted that Mrs. Garth was a trifle too emphatic in her resistance to what she held to be follies:  the passage from governess into housewife had wrought itself a little too strongly into her consciousness, and she rarely forgot that while her grammar and accent were above the town standard, she wore a plain cap, cooked the family dinner, and darned all the stockings.  She had sometimes taken pupils in a peripatetic fashion, making them follow her about in the kitchen with their book or slate.  She thought it good for them to see that she could make an excellent lather while she corrected their blunders “without looking,”—­ that a woman with her sleeves tucked up above her elbows might know all about the Subjunctive Mood or the Torrid Zone—­that, in short, she might possess “education” and other good things ending in “tion,” and worthy to be pronounced emphatically, without being a useless doll.  When she made remarks to this edifying effect, she had a firm little frown on her brow, which yet did not hinder her face from looking benevolent, and her words which came forth like a procession were uttered in a fervid agreeable contralto.  Certainly, the exemplary Mrs. Garth had her droll aspects, but her character sustained her oddities, as a very fine wine sustains a flavor of skin.

Towards Fred Vincy she had a motherly feeling, and had always been disposed to excuse his errors, though she would probably not have excused Mary for engaging herself to him, her daughter being included in that more rigorous judgment which she applied to her own sex.  But this very fact of her exceptional indulgence towards him made it the harder to Fred that he must now inevitably sink in her opinion.  And the circumstances of his visit turned out to be still more unpleasant than he had expected; for Caleb Garth had gone out early to look at some repairs not far off.  Mrs. Garth at certain hours was always in the kitchen, and this morning she was carrying on several occupations at once there—­making her pies at the well-scoured deal table on one side of that airy room, observing Sally’s movements at the oven and dough-tub through an open door, and giving lessons to her youngest boy and girl, who were standing opposite to her at the table with their books and slates before them.  A tub and a clothes-horse at the other end of the kitchen indicated an intermittent wash of small things also going on.