“Well, make up, make up,” said Mr. Standish, jocosely; “you see the
middle-aged fellows carry the day.”

Mr. Chichely shook his head with much meaning: he was not going to
incur the certainty of being accepted by the woman he would choose.

The Miss Vincy who had the honor of being Mr. Chichely’s ideal was of
course not present; for Mr. Brooke, always objecting to go too far,
would not have chosen that his nieces should meet the daughter of a
Middlemarch manufacturer, unless it were on a public occasion. The
feminine part of the company included none whom Lady Chettam or Mrs.
Cadwallader could object to; for Mrs. Renfrew, the colonel’s widow, was
not only unexceptionable in point of breeding, but also interesting on
the ground of her complaint, which puzzled the doctors, and seemed
clearly a case wherein the fulness of professional knowledge might need
the supplement of quackery. Lady Chettam, who attributed her own
remarkable health to home-made bitters united with constant medical
attendance, entered with much exercise of the imagination into Mrs.
Renfrew’s account of symptoms, and into the amazing futility in her
case of all strengthening medicines.

“Where can all the strength of those medicines go, my dear?” said the
mild but stately dowager, turning to Mrs. Cadwallader reflectively,
when Mrs. Renfrew’s attention was called away.

“It strengthens the disease,” said the Rector’s wife, much too
well-born not to be an amateur in medicine. “Everything depends on the
constitution: some people make fat, some blood, and some bile—that’s my
view of the matter; and whatever they take is a sort of grist to the
mill.”

“Then she ought to take medicines that would reduce—reduce the disease,
you know, if you are right, my dear. And I think what you say is
reasonable.”

“Certainly it is reasonable. You have two sorts of potatoes, fed on the
same soil. One of them grows more and more watery—”

“Ah! like this poor Mrs. Renfrew—that is what I think. Dropsy! There is
no swelling yet—it is inward. I should say she ought to take drying

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