“Yes, indeed:  I was not born to very splendid chances.  Few men have been more cramped than I have been,” said Fred, with some sense of surprise at his own virtue, considering how hardly he was dealt with.  “It really seems a little too bad to have to ride a broken-winded hunter, and see men, who, are not half such good judges as yourself, able to throw away any amount of money on buying bad bargains.”

“Well, you can buy yourself a fine hunter now.  Eighty pound is enough for that, I reckon—­and you’ll have twenty pound over to get yourself out of any little scrape,” said Mr. Featherstone, chuckling slightly.

“You are very good, sir,” said Fred, with a fine sense of contrast between the words and his feeling.

“Ay, rather a better uncle than your fine uncle Bulstrode.  You won’t get much out of his spekilations, I think.  He’s got a pretty strong string round your father’s leg, by what I hear, eh?”

“My father never tells me anything about his affairs, sir.”

“Well, he shows some sense there.  But other people find ’em out without his telling. He’ll never have much to leave you:  he’ll most-like die without a will—­he’s the sort of man to do it—­ let ’em make him mayor of Middlemarch as much as they like.  But you won’t get much by his dying without a will, though you are the eldest son.”

Fred thought that Mr. Featherstone had never been so disagreeable before.  True, he had never before given him quite so much money at once.

“Shall I destroy this letter of Mr. Bulstrode’s, sir?” said Fred, rising with the letter as if he would put it in the fire.

“Ay, ay, I don’t want it.  It’s worth no money to me.”

Fred carried the letter to the fire, and thrust the poker through it with much zest.  He longed to get out of the room, but he was a little ashamed before his inner self, as well as before his uncle, to run away immediately after pocketing the money.  Presently, the farm-bailiff came up to give his master a report, and Fred, to his unspeakable relief, was dismissed with the injunction to come again soon.

He had longed not only to be set free from his uncle, but also to find Mary Garth.  She was now in her usual place by the fire, with sewing in her hands and a book open on the little table by her side.  Her eyelids had lost some of their redness now, and she had her usual air of self-command.

“Am I wanted up-stairs?” she said, half rising as Fred entered.

“No; I am only dismissed, because Simmons is gone up.”

Mary sat down again, and resumed her work.  She was certainly treating him with more indifference than usual:  she did not know how affectionately indignant he had felt on her behalf up-stairs.

“May I stay here a little, Mary, or shall I bore you?”

“Pray sit down,” said Mary; “you will not be so heavy a bore as Mr. John Waule, who was here yesterday, and he sat down without asking my leave.”